Language Diversity in the Late Habsburg Empire 9004402101, 9789004402102

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Language Diversity in the Late Habsburg Empire

Central and Eastern Europe Regional Perspectives in Global Context

Series Editors Constantin Iordachi (Central European University, Budapest) Maciej Janowski (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw) Balázs Trencsényi (Central European University, Budapest)

VOLUME 9 This peer-reviewed book series publishes innovative research on various historical, social, and cultural aspects of Central and Eastern Europe. Its main aim is to stimulate dialogue and exchange between scholarship on Central and Eastern Europe and other academic research traditions, in a global context. Although we distance ourselves from the traditional perspective of ‘area studies,’ which tends to approach historical regions in isolation and thus runs the risk of parochialism, we posit nevertheless that there is an immense analytical potential in comparative and transnational research on particular regions. Without pleading for any rigid definition of regions, we argue nonetheless that concepts of historical regions are able to serve as privileged angles through which to approach the history of certain geographical spaces and as useful devices for tackling certain research topics. One can gain from employing a regional framework of interpretation the drive for historical comparison, a permanent challenge to retain the complexity of the units of analysis, the plurality of scales, as well as the reflection on the fuzziness of the very categories of comparison. Regional perspectives have the potential to overcome isolated national ‘grand narratives’ by inscribing seemingly local or nation-specific phenomena into larger contexts. Such approaches provide a remedy against discourses of national exclusivism and exceptionalism, facilitating the reappraisal of a wide range of regional or European topics. On a more general level, this exercise in regional comparative research can potentially enrich European or global narratives. While sharing larger, Europe-wide developments, the rich historical experience of Central and Eastern Europe in the early modern and modern periods—marked by massive demographic and sociopolitical transformations, competing projects of nationbuilding, the impact of fascist and communist dictatorships, the processes of political democratization and European integration—presents certain particularities that makes these regions laboratories for the study of social, cultural and political transformation. The imperious need to integrate the history of these regions into a common European framework demands novel transnational perspectives of research, potentially leading to new integrative fields of study.

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/cee

Language Diversity in the Late Habsburg Empire Edited by

Markian Prokopovych Carl Bethke Tamara Scheer

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Prokopovych, Markian, 1972– author, editor. | Bethke, Carl, author,  editor. | Scheer, Tamara, author, editor. Title: Language diversity in the late Habsburg empire / edited by Markian  Prokopovych, Carl Bethke, Tamara Scheer. Other titles: Central and Eastern Europe (Leiden, Netherlands) ; 9. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2019. | Series: Central and Eastern  Europe, 1877–8550 ; 9 | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019023112 (print) | LCCN 2019023113 (ebook) |  ISBN 9789004402102 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004407978 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Multilingualism—Austria—History. Classification: LCC P115.5.A9 L36 2019 (print) | LCC P115.5.A9 (ebook) |  DDC 404/.209436—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023112 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023113

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1877-8550 isbn 978-90-04-40210-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-40797-8 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Notes on Contributors vii 1

Language Diversity in the Late Habsburg Empire: Foreword from the Editors 1 Markian Prokopovych, Carl Bethke, and Tamara Scheer

2

Encounters with Language Diversity in Late Habsburg Austria 12 Pieter M. Judson

3

The Fight for the National Linguistic Primacy: Testimonies from the Austrian Littoral 26 Marta Verginella

4

The Evolution of Linguistic Policies and Practices of the Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces in the Era of Ethnic Nationalisms: The Case of Ljubljana-Laibach 50 Rok Stergar

5

Language Transition in the Town of Osijek at the End of Austro-Hungarian Rule (1902–1913) 72 Anamarija Lukić

6 The Bosnische Post: A Newspaper in Sarajevo, 1884–1903 87 Carl Bethke 7

K.u.K. Generals of Romanian Nationality and Their Views on the Language Question 115 Irina Marin

8

German and Romanian in Town Governments of Dualist Transylvania and the Banat 135 Ágoston Berecz

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The People of the “Five Hundred Villages”: Hungarians, Rusyns, Jews, and the Roma in the Transcarpathian Region in Austria–Hungary 160 Csilla Fedinec and István Csernicskó

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Education in Habsburg Borderlands: The K.u.K. Staats-Oberrealschule in the Austrian Silesian Town of Teschen (1900–1921) 196 Matthäus Wehowski

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Reconstructing Multilingualism in Everyday Life: The Case of Late Habsburg Lviv 218 Jan Fellerer

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How Jesus Became a Woman, Climbed the Mountain, and Started to Roar: Habsburg Bukovina’s Celebrated Multilingualism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 244 Jeroen van Drunen Index 269

Notes on Contributors Ágoston Berecz received his PhD from Central European University in 2017. He is currently a Max Weber Fellow at European University Institute, Florence. He is the author of The Politics of Early Language Teaching: Hungarian in the Primary Schools of the Late Dual Monarchy (2013). His research concerns the relationship between language and nationalism, as well as the history of nineteenth-century Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on Transylvania. Carl Bethke is Junior Professor for Southeast European History at the University of Tübingen. His research interests are the late Habsburg Monarchy, Yugoslavia, nationalism, ethnic minorities, and confessions. He is the author of (K)eine gemeinsame Sprache? Aspekte deutsch-jüdischer Beziehungsgeschichte in Slawonien. Vom Zusammenleben zum Holocaust, 1900–1950 (2013) and Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten in Kroatien und der Vojvodina 1918–1941: Identitätsentwürfe und ethnopolitische Mobilisierung (2009). István Csernicskó is Full Professor at the University of Pannonia, Veszprém, Hungary. He works on language education, educational policy, sociolinguistics, as well as memory politics, with a particular emphasis on the region of Transcarpathia. He is the author of several publications in English (some co-authored with Csilla Fedinec) on language law and policy in Ukraine and the reconceptualization of memory after the Revolution of Dignity. Csilla Fedinec is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Minority Studies, Centre for Social Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. Her research interests include Transcarpathia in the twentieth century, history and politics in Ukraine, and historical minority politics in Central and Eastern Europe. Her most recent publications (some co-authored with István Csernicskó) deal with the recent language laws of Ukraine. She is the editor of Hungary’s Neighbors as Kin-States: Political, Scholarly and Scientific Relations Between Hungary’s Neighbors and Their Respective Minorities (2016).

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Jan Fellerer is Associate Professor in Non-Russian Slavonic Languages and a Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Oxford. He specializes in Slavonic linguistics, in particular the history of Polish, Czech, and Ukrainian, with special reference to the modern period from the late eighteenth century to the present day. He has written on topics in Slavonic syntax, language theory, Galicia, hybrid cultural identities in East Central Europe, and multilingual states and empires in European history. Pieter M. Judson is Professor of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century History at the European University Institute in Florence. His research interests include the history of European Empires, borderlands, national indifference in modern Europe, and the history of sexuality. His most recent book The Habsburg Empire: A New History (2016) has been translated into eleven languages. Currently he is coediting the Cambridge History of the Habsburg Monarchy. Anamarija Lukić has a PhD in history and is currently a research associate at the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Science, Regional Centre Osijek. She is the author of several articles on everyday language practices in the town of Osijek in the first half of the twentieth century and on modern and contemporary local history of Slavonia and the Baranja region of Croatia. Irina Marin is Assistant Professor in Political History at Utrecht University. Her areas of research are Eastern and Central European history, borderland studies, rural history, and the history of social violence. She is the author of two books: Contested Frontiers in the Balkans: Ottoman and Habsburg Rivalries in Eastern Europe (2013) and Peasant Violence and Antisemitism in Early Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (2018). Markian Prokopovych is Assistant Professor in Modern European Cultural History at Durham University. He is the author of Habsburg Lemberg: Architecture, Public Space and Politics in the Galician Capital, 1772–1914 (2009), In the Public Eye: The Budapest Opera House, the Audience and the Press, 1884–1918 (2014), and a number of articles in cultural and urban history of the Habsburg Empire.

Notes on Contributors

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Tamara Scheer is a lecturer and research associate at the Institute for East European History, University of Vienna. She is the author of several articles and monographs on the late Habsburg Monarchy focusing on language use, identities, and loyalties during the First World War, the Habsburg monarchy’s Balkan engagement, nationalism and the role of the Catholic Church in the long nineteenth century, as well as Habsburg legacies after 1918. Rok Stergar is Associate Professor of History at the University of Ljubljana and a historian of the Habsburg Empire in the long nineteenth century, the First World War, and the history of nationalism. He is the author of two books and numerous articles on nationalisms in the Habsburg Empire, the Habsburg military, and Austro-Hungarian soldier experience in the First World War. He is currently working on a book on the history of Slovene nationalism. Jeroen van Drunen is a PhD graduate of the University of Amsterdam and an independent scholar residing in Hungary. His area of expertise is the history of Bukovina in the nineteenth and twentieth century. He is the author of A Sanguine Bunch: Regional Identification in Habsburg Bukovina, 1774–1919 (2015) and is currently working on a book on fellow travellers of socialist Romania in the early 1950s. Marta Verginella is Full Professor of History at the University of Ljubljana. Currently she is leading the ERC Advanced Grant EIRENE Project (2017–2022). She is the author of Il confine degli altri. La questione giuliana e la memoria slovena (2008), La guerra di Bruno. L’ identità di confine di un antieroe triestino e sloveno (2015), and Terre e lasciti. Pratiche testamentarie nel contado triestino fra Otto e Novecento (2017). Matthäus Wehowski is a PhD graduate of the Institute for East European History and Regional Studies of the Eberhard-Karls Universität, Tübingen. He is currently a research fellow at the Hannah Arendt Institute for the Research on Totalitarianism at the Technical University of Dresden. His research interests are twentiethcentury Central and Eastern Europe with a particular focus on nationalization, and religious and media history in the interwar period. His dissertation thesis is “Between Cross and Flag—Catholic Mobilization and the Rise of Nationalism in Slavonia and Eastern Silesia (1922–1929).”

Chapter 1

Language Diversity in the Late Habsburg Empire: Foreword from the Editors Markian Prokopovych, Carl Bethke, and Tamara Scheer This book seeks to approach language diversity in multi-ethnic communities of the Habsburg Empire by focusing critically on the urban-rural divide and the importance of status for multilingual competence and language diversity in local governments, schools, the army, and the urban public sphere. Its aim is to offer the first comprehensive overview of language diversity for the entire territory of the Habsburg Monarchy, placing emphasis on the experiences and encounters at urban frontiers and the linguistic policies and practices in transition. Language diversity and linguistic competence—and more specific phenomena such as multilingualism and polyglossia—are a defining characteristic of the contemporary world, and yet are often considered to be historically incomparable and unique. With reference to global linguistic changes that made it impossible for state apparatuses, global businesses, and other supranational networks to exist without linguistic competence in multiple languages, sociolinguistics have even coined the term “the new linguistic order.”1 Its study is currently a booming field: apart from the solid body of research in contemporary linguistics, the study of multilingualism boasts several internationally reputed journals, for instance, International Journal of Multilingualism (Taylor & Francis/Routledge) and Critical Multilingualism Studies (University of Arizona), to name but two. There is also a wealth of publications on linguistic competence, “the new linguistic order,” contemporary language and education policy, and material culture.2

1  Jacques Maurais, “Towards a New Linguistic World Order,” in Languages in a Globalizing World, ed. Jacques Maurais and Michael Morris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 13–36. 2  See, for example, Larissa Aronin and David Singleton, “Multilingualism as a New Linguistic Dispensation,” International Journal of Multilingualism 5 (2008) 1: 1–16; Aronin and Singleton, Multilingualism (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2012); Marilyn Martin-Jones, Adrian Blackledge, and Angela Creese, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism (New York: Routledge, 2012).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004407978_002

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Within the broader historical discussion on language diversity and multilingualism, a number of states and empires are often singled out in which language competences were essential for the smooth and successful running of state operations over longer periods of time.3 The Habsburg Empire occupies a somewhat privileged place on this list. For example, contradicting the gist and tone of some of the recent studies of multilingualism in the contemporary world that tend to stress the uniqueness of the contemporary experience and presumably the unique impossibility of the contemporary world to function without such practices, Rosita Rindler Schjerve and Eva Vetter have argued for the thesis that language diversity in the Habsburg Empire could serve as a model for contemporary policy making.4 Largely independently from this discussion, Tomasz Kamusella explored at great length the development of Central European languages through history and their connection to nationalist politics in the region, without specifying, however, whether the Habsburg terrain was specific in this regard.5 This book approaches this topic critically, informed by recent scholarship in Habsburg studies that focus on aspects that actually bound the empire’s diverse population together,6 as well as of the dangers of equating historical precedents and their contemporary applicability. While not questioning the usefulness of Rindler Schjerve’s and Vetter’s theories, this book offers a wealth and richness of examples that provide further evidence for both the merits of how language diversity was managed in the late Habsburg Empire and the problems and contradictions that surrounded

3  Catherine E. Léglu, Multilingualism and Mother Tongue in Medieval French, Occitan, and Catalan Narratives (University Park: The Penn State University Press, 2010); Kurt Braunmüller, “Receptive Multilingualism in Northern Europe in the Middle Ages: A Description of a Scenario,” in Receptive Multilingualism: Linguistic Analyses, Language Policies and Didactic Concepts, ed. Jan D. ten Thije and Ludvig Zeevaert (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007), 25–47; Jean-Michel Picard, “The French Language in Medieval Ireland,” in The Languages of Ireland, ed. Michael Cronin and Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), 57–77. 4  Rosita Rindler Schjerve and Eva Vetter, “Linguistic Diversity in Habsburg Austria as a Model for Modern European Language Policy,” in Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies, ed. Kurt Braunmüller and Christoph Gabriel (Amsterdam: John Benjamins 2012), 49–70. Also see Jan Fellerer, “Multilingual States and Empires in the History of Europe: The Habsburg Monarchy,” in The Languages and Linguistics of Europe, ed. Bernd Kortmann and John van der Auwera (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 713–28. 5  Tomasz Kamusella, Creating Languages in Central Europe During the Last Millennium (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Kamusella, The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 6  Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016).

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those practices, complete with some studies that question the “ideal-typical” status of Austria-Hungary as an efficient multilingual empire state. Within historical scholarship, many studies of language diversity in the Habsburg Empire focus on those most obvious fields in which it manifested itself and continues to invoke heated political debates today: the areas of schooling, army, and politics.7 Among many relevant recent works on the topic that inspired this book we would like to single out the following three. First, Diglossia and Power: Language Policies and Practice in the 19th Century Habsburg Empire is the first collective volume to provide an overarching, comparative narrative on language diversity with a focus on one very important aspect, namely, how through language policies certain groups vied for dominance and hegemony.8 At the same time, the comparative framework that the book offers has its limitations since it offers us an overview of only some Habsburg regions, as the editor Rindler Schjerve acknowledges in her introduction: “The term Habsburg Empire, as we use it here, refers exclusively to the Western and German dominated part of this multi-ethnic state and does not consider the territories under Hungarian influence.”9 Thus the policies and practices of the Hungarian half of the Monarchy lie beyond Rindler Schjerve’s scope. By contrast, our book offers a much more balanced representation of regions. While few studies of the late Habsburg Empire could claim to cover all its diverse and heterogeneous territories with the same degree of focus and precision, this book offers 7  See, for example, Ágoston Berecz, The Politics of Early Language Teaching: Hungarian in the Primary Schools of the Late Dual Monarchy (Budapest: Pasts, Inc. Studies and Working Papers, 2014); Waltraud Heindl, “Zum cisleithanischen Beamtentum: Staatsdiener und Fürstendiener,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. 9, part 1, ed. Helmut Rumpler and Peter Urbanitsch (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), 1157–1209; Hannelore Burger, “Die Vertreibung der Mehrsprachigkeit am Beispel Österreichs 1867–1918,” in Über Muttersprachen und Vaterländer. Zur Entwicklung von Standardsprachen und Nationen in Europa, ed. Gerd Hentschel (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 1997), 35–49; Burger, “Sprachen und Sprachpolitiken. Niederösterreich und die Bukowina im Vergleich,” in Zentren, Peripherien und kollektive Identitäten in Österreich-Ungarn, ed. Endre Hárs, Wolfgang MüllerFunk, Ursula Reber, and Clemens Ruthner (Tübingen and Basel: Francke, 2006), 79–96; Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit im österreichische Unterrichtswesen 1867–1918 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1995); Joachim v. Puttkamer, “Nationale Peripherien. Strukturen und Deutungsmuster im ungarischen Schulwesen 1867– 1914,” in Hárs, Müller-Funk, Reber, and Ruthner, Zentren, Peripherien und kollektive Identitäten in Österreich-Ungarn, 97–110; R.J.W. Evans, “Language and State Building: The Case of the Habsburg Monarchy,” Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 1–24; Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). 8  Rosita Rindler Schjerve, ed., Diglossia and Power: Language Policies and Practice in the 19th Century Habsburg Empire (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003), 1. 9  Rindler Schjerve, Diglossia and Power, 1.

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an equally comprehensive, even if not exhaustive, overview of Hungarian and Hungarian-influenced regions as the German- and Slavic-dominated domains. The second recent relevant contribution to the historiographic debate on the linguistic diversity in the late Habsburg empire is Michaela Wolf’s The Habsburg Monarchy’s Many-Languaged Soul: Translating and Interpreting, 1848–1918.10 Her book discusses how in a pluricultural space of changing linguistic regimes and nationalism, specific forms of translation and interpretation contributed to the formation of specific cultures. Based on a close reading of administrative, judicial, and diplomatic documents and aiming to establish how translation was carried out in everyday life, the book outlines translation practices across different Habsburg crownlands. However, its main contribution, similarly to that of Rindler Schjerve, is to the discussion of a narrower case study, that of Italian–German exchange. The third work that inspired our volume is Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European Experience,11 a collective work edited by Johannes Feichtinger and Gary B. Cohen, which approaches a related—though fundamentally distinct— concept of multiculturalism in the Habsburg Empire and addresses issues of nationalism and “ethnicist” scholarship. Pieter M. Judson’s contribution to Feichtinger’s and Cohen’s volume in particular addresses the issue of language practices and suggests that in its reliance on the data of language use, nationalist historiography often presumed the existence of separate, linguistically defined ethnic cultures, while in a multilingual space of the Habsburg Empire the choice to use a specific language did not necessarily evidence a defined national loyalty.  Judson explores the link between multilingualism and a much more contested phenomenon of multiculturalism.12 Being aware of these discussions, this book aims to concentrate especially on language practices at the local, everyday level, which have hitherto been overlooked or have only recently become the subject of interest for historical analysis. First of all, language diversity in the Habsburg army has emerged as one of the promising trends in new military history. A closer look at the everyday practices and interactions between different army corps, within the army hierarchy, and especially between the local garrisons and the local population can provide valuable new insights on the functioning of public space 10  Michaela Wolf, The Habsburg Monarchy’s Many-Languaged Soul: Translating and Interpreting, 1848–1918, translated by Kate Sturge (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2015). 11  Johannes Feichtinger and Gary B. Cohen, eds., Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European Experience (New York: Berghahn, 2014). 12  Pieter M. Judson, “The Limits of Nationalist Activism in Imperial Austria: Creating Frontiers in Daily Life,” in Feichtinger and Cohen, Understanding Multiculturalism, 61–82.

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in the late Dual Monarchy.13 Secondly, while language politics and language legislation for education were instituted on the level of the central state, it is especially revealing to observe how language diversity manifested itself and was practiced at the everyday, local level. A number of recent studies highlighted the complexities of regional and urban contexts for linguistic competence and language practices in the era of nationalism.14 Several contributions in this book follow this trend and concentrate on the specifically urban—and 13  Tamara Scheer, “Die k.u.k. Regimentssprachen: Eine Institutionalisierung der Sprachenvielfalt in der Habsburgermonarchie (1867/8–1914),” in Sprache, Gesellschaft und Nation in Ostmitteleuropa. Institutionalisierung und Alltagspraxis, ed. Martina Niedhammer et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 75–92; Scheer, “Habsburg Languages at War: ‘The linguistic confusion at the tower of Babel couldn’t have been much worse,’” in Languages and the First World War, vol. 1, Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War, ed. Christophe Declercq and Julian Walker (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016), 62–78; Rok Stergar, “Illyrian Autochthonism and the Beginnings of South Slav Nationalisms in the West Balkans,” in In Search of Pre-Classical Antiquity: Rediscovering Ancient Peoples in Mediterranean Europe (19th and 20th c.), ed. Antonino De Francesco (Leiden: Brill, 2016); István Deák, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 14   Lelija Sočanac, “Multilingualism, Power and Identity in 19th Century Croatia,” in Glottogenesis and Language Conflicts in Europe, ed. Sture Ureland and Lelija Sočanac (Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2017), 69–91; Anita Sujoldžić and Anja Iveković Martinis, “The Legacy of Multilingualism in the Adriatic during Austria-Hungary,” in Linguistic and Cultural Interactions—An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. Rita Pletl and Noémi Fazekas (ClujNapoca: Scientia Publishing House, 2016), 195–203; Bálint Varga, “Multilingualism in Urban Hungary, 1880–1910,” Nationalities Papers 42, no. 6 (2014): 965–80; Carl Bethke, (K)eine gemeinsame Sprache? Aspekte deutsch-jüdischer Beziehungsgeschichte in Slawonien. Vom Zusammenleben zum Holocaust, 1900–1945 (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2013); Vesna Deželjin, “Reflexes of the Habsburg Empire Multilingualism in some Triestine Literary Texts,” Jezikoslovlje 13, no. 2 (2012): 419–37; Mirna Jernej, Zrinjka Glovacki-Bernardi, and Anita Sujoldžić, “Multilingualism in Northwestern Part of Croatia during Habsburg Rule,” Jezikoslovlje 13, no. 2 (2012): 327–50; Dominique Kirchner Reill, Nationalists Who Feared the Nation: Adriatic Multi-Nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012); László Marácz, “Multilingualism in the Transleithanian Part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867–1918): Policy And Practice,” Jezikoslovlje 13, no. 2 (2012): 269–98; Susan Gal, “Polyglot Nationalism. Alternative Perspectives on Language in 19th Century Hungary,” Langage et société 136, no. 2 (2011): 31–54; Alexander Maxwell, Choosing Slovakia: Slavic Hungary, the Czechoslovak Language and Accidental Nationalism (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009); Susanne Czeitschner, “Sprachgebrauch und Gerichtswesen in Triest,” in Lingua e politica. La politica linguistica della duplice monarchia e la sua attualità. Sprache und Politik. Die Sprachpolitik der Donaumonarchie und ihre Aktualität, ed. Umberto Rinaldi, Rosita Rindler Schjerve, and Michael Metzeltin (Vienna: Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 1997), 44–51; Jan Havránek, “Das Prager Bildungswesen, 1875 bis 1925,” in Wien-Prag-Budapest: Blütezeit der Habsburgermetropolen, ed. Gerhard Melinz and Susan Zimmermann (Vienna: Promedia, 1996), 185–200.

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often previously unexplored—public space and the way diverse actors saw themselves and employed their linguistic skills in urban contexts throughout the Habsburg Empire. Such cases range from places that are known today as Trieste and Lviv to the specificity of the Habsburg regions of Silesia, Slavonia, Transcarpathia, Transylvania, and the Banat. In our attempt to understand language diversity in the late Habsburg Empire, we purport to position it within broader everyday practices, rather than within the debates on the rise of nations and nationalism, as was routinely done in the past. Rather than an overview of Austria-Hungary’s complex linguistic and ethnopolitical composition, or a contribution to a terminological debate on the definition of di- and polyglossia, multilingualism, or even of language as opposed to dialect,15 this book makes specific case studies of language diversity in their specific local contexts. Following Judson, we start with the preamble that “the particular character of imperial law, of imperial administrative practice, and of traditional claims for crownland autonomy taken together made it more likely that when people in Austria-Hungary became civically engaged, it was through institutions that demanded fairness or parity in official linguistic practice … Nationalist conflict was not an inevitable result of the multilingual quality of Austrian and Hungarian societies but was a product of institutions.”16 Furthermore, nationalist sentiment was often event-specific and situational, and in many other daily situations the Habsburg subjects’ linguistic practices suggested that it could be disregarded or sometimes even ignored altogether. This book’s contributors carefully examine such divergent and contradictory practices and suggest their own solutions in their case studies. Taken as a whole, a series of important questions arise from the contributions: At what level and at what time did the commander of a town garrison start communicating with the city representatives in a “local” language and what language would that be? Did it matter whether they were dealing with official municipal representatives or independent local activists? How did theatres shape their repertoires to suit the multilingual public of cities? What strategies of interaction did those urban societies accustomed to language diversity find? How did local governments, schools, and the press foster, or alternatively hamper multilingualism? Did the process of urbanization, bringing new populations into hitherto multi-ethnic cities, change the carefully established arrangements, and what strategies did the new groups from 15  See, for example, Tomasz Kamusella, “The History of the Normative Opposition of ‘Language versus Dialect’: From Its Graeco-Latin Origin to Central Europe’s Ethnolinguistic Nation-States,” Colloquia Humanistica 5 (2016), 164–88. 16  Judson, The Habsburg Empire, 272.

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regions lacking language diversity foster in the new urban space? Did nationalist politics necessarily foster monolingualism? Were poor literacy and imbalance between the status of languages a hindrance or a resource for everyday multilingual practices? The book aims to answer these questions by looking at specific urban actors, groups, and localities in the so typically linguistically diverse late Habsburg Empire. In his opening chapter, Pieter M. Judson argues that, rather than multilingual practices, it was the particular institutional frameworks in which they took place and gained social meaning that made Austria-Hungary distinct by European standards. Thanks to institutional practice, multilingualism became an issue worthy of note, debate, conflict, and legislation to a far greater extent than was the case in other societies. On the one hand, migration created enclaves of multilingualism at the level of the neighbourhood, particularly in industrial towns. On the other hand, linguistic profiles could often change thanks to nationalist policies practiced by local city councils and their organ­ ized supporters. In an age when nationhood became defined increasingly in demographic and then eugenic terms all over Europe, nationalists focused on and problematized multilingual practices as a point of particular anxiety. Judson calls for the need to look beyond such organized efforts and at the range and meanings of multilingual practices and spaces, from the intimacy of a household to local translations, and to detach multilingualism from multiculturalism altogether in our thinking. Marta Verginella provides an analysis of language practice in Austrian Trieste and its surroundings in the nineteenth century with a particular focus on the use of Slovene. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, Slovene was regarded as the language of the minority, mostly rural population. From the 1860s onwards, it was ousted from official documents and partly from church practices. The city authorities that in Trieste were controlled by the Italian Liberal National Party limited the use of what they understood as the minority language in practices that were within their jurisdiction, as well as attempted to influence policies within the central state’s jurisdiction. The analysis of last wills and testaments in the countryside and in urban centres of Trieste and Gorizia demonstrates that the use of Slovene established itself only in districts that were not a part of larger cities’ municipal authority. Additionally, the research into the minutes of Trieste and Gorizia city councils and into the press reports reveals how Italian city authorities hindered the official recognition of Slovene, and how the Slovene national representative bodies strived to achieve the recognition of their language in the urban environment. Ljubljana-Laibach, in the Austrian region of Carniola, Rok Stergar shows was bilingual at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The majority of the

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inhabitants spoke Slovene but there was a significant German-speaking minority. German was the preferred language of the middle and upper classes and it was predominant in culture, education, commerce, and administration. With the advent of Slovene nationalism in the middle of the nineteenth century, the role of German started to diminish as the use of Slovene became a political act and the Slovenification of Ljubljana an important goal of Slovene nationalists. Even the military’s use of German as the language of administration and command came under increased scrutiny. However, even the most nationalist municipal politicians could not deny the importance of the garrison for the economy of the town or the popularity of the regimental band’s concerts. Consequently, they had to find pragmatic solutions for daily coexistence. The same was true for the army: it too could not ignore the new state of affairs and had to find a working compromise. During the first decade of the twentieth century, the town of Osijek, in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia within the Hungarian half of the monarchy, experienced a similar transformation from the dominant German language to Croatian. The cause of this transformation was a sudden increase of Croatianspeaking inhabitants, but the transformation was accelerated by the Croatian resistance to Magyarization policies fostered by the provincial government of Khuen-Héderváry. Anamarija Lukić demonstrates that the most significant contributions to the language transformation were the launch of the Croatianlanguage press, such as the newspaper Narodna obrana, and the establishment of the Croatian National Theatre. Nevertheless, the public and private life of Osijekers was marked with the constant contact of languages, as well as a mixture of them, a feature that survived even after the breakdown of the AustroHungarian Monarchy. The Bosnische Post, a newspaper in Sarajevo, the capital of Habsburg BosniaHerzegovina, appeared in the German language until 1918. The paper was sometimes attacked as a symbol of “German” dominance; however, as becomes evident from Carl Bethke’s analysis, it hardly aimed at representing “Germans” as a group. Rather, it promoted an imperial, liberal, and remarkably secular agenda, which it directed at a transnational immigrant readership of those who came to Sarajevo from all over the monarchy. Even though not a governmental newspaper as such, the Bosnische Post approved of many of the programmes of the Austro-Hungarian administration, in particular those in the realm of infrastructure development. Interestingly, it also appears to have functioned as a sort of a double vitrine: on the one hand, presenting the Viennese flair and lifestyle for Bosnians, and on the other, for its German readers further afield, showing the province’s culture, history, and heritage through translations of local Bosnian authors’ literary, historical, and journalistic pieces.

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Irina Marin’s contribution offers insights into the views about language and language use in the Monarchy as espoused by a sample of K.u.K. high-ranking officers of Romanian nationality, many of them from the Banat which was then in the Hungarian half of the monarchy. She demonstrates how the officers objected to monolingualism irrespective whether this meant Magyarization or withdrawal into one’s native language. She argues that these views were informed by their military status as well as by their origin in the Military Border, which presupposed a strong awareness of their ethnic identity and experience of a pragmatic use of vernacular languages in local administration and schools. Ágoston Berecz focuses on linguistic practices within the official sphere of Dualist Hungary. Relying on material from Romanian state archives, he documents the enduring presence of Romanian and German in the written administration of Transylvanian and Banat towns with Romanian and German majorities. The study maps the domains where the two languages were typically used, as well as the functions reserved for the use of Hungarian, identifying a slow onslaught of the latter. Although it should not be taken as representative for other regions and other minority languages of Dualist Hungary, the gap between the clamorous nation-state building agenda pursued in Budapest and the realities in some of the less visible peripheries is clearly evident and worth noting. The north-eastern corner of the Kingdom of Hungary was one of the unique regions of Europe in that, while divided into several counties until 1918, it was also inhabited by ethnic groups for whom it was a homogenous region. The political borders of the region never coincided with its ethnic, ethnographic, linguistic or cultural borders: it remained on the peripheries of power, and several centres continue to exert their influence on it to this very day. Csilla Fedinec and István Csernicskó explore the linguistic practices of the main ethnic communities—Rusyns, Hungarians, Jews, and the Roma—from a historical and sociolinguistic perspective. Focusing on the small communities torn apart by several power centres, they analyse how nation-building and linguistic ideologies impacted the development of these communities under the late Habsburg rule. The events taking place from the end of 1918 onwards that split Transcarpathia between a number of countries, they argue, “decomposed” this historical-cultural symbiosis. Matthäus Wehowski examines the development of the heterogeneous imperial borderlands of Austro-Hungary, focusing on the example of a technical school in the town of Teschen in Austrian Silesia. The pupils of the “K. K. Staats-Oberrealschule” had different national and religious backgrounds: there were Germans, Poles, and Czechs, and some were Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. Even in a period of nascent nationalism from 1900 onwards, the

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school provided some room for coexistence. Relying on the analysis of school yearbooks, the chapter traces the changes, challenges, and survival of “imperial” diversity during the First World War and its aftermath. How can the functioning of multilingualism in everyday life in past urban societies be reconstructed? Jan Fellerer addresses this question by focusing on late Habsburg Lviv, in the Crownland of Galicia and Lodomeria. The city’s residents and visitors of different native languages inevitably had day-to-day dealings with each other through trade, commerce, employment, lodging, personal relations, entertainment, and other daily activities. However, the functioning of these encounters in linguistic terms remains elusive. The study explores late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century court records as sources that grant rare glimpses into ordinary people’s daily routines. An inductive analysis of these sources allows for the tracing of patterns of linguistic usage in multilingual fin-de-siècle Lviv and to associate them with particular constituencies in the city’s population. The key languages in question include varieties of Polish, Ukrainian, Yiddish, and German. While it is true that standard Polish dominated the city’s official, “top-level” domains such as public administration, everyday life produced mixed linguistic, Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Yiddish usage as well as forms of more fully fledged individual bi- and multilingualism. With the arrival of the Habsburgs, Bukovina became famous not only for its multitude of languages, but also acquired some fame for the alleged multilingualism of its population. Both contemporary and post-factum Bukovinian historiography have largely followed the path of competing nationalisms that dominated the political discourse of the time. Multilingualism as such has not been researched and has so far been merely touched upon. If Bukovinians spoke all these languages, Jeroen van Drunen asks in his last, revisionist contribution, how well did they actually master them? And could cases of language transfer, or cross-linguistic interference, have been the norm rather than the exception? A final note on style and terminology: It is perhaps ironic that it is so particularly difficult to fit diverse and locally specific concepts, terms, and language practices that characterised the late Habsburg Empire into the straightjacket of an English-language book with uniform and coherent spelling and orthography. To do so would mean not only to impose a sense of coherence where in reality there might have been divergent, if related, practices, but also to submit to the unrestrained authority of a translator. To use a few examples from German, what in English would be normally known as “nation” would in most of our authors’ sources be Nationalität, but it was also sometimes Volksstamm. Conversely, the German term Ausgleich, the key event that created Austria-Hungary in 1867, is routinely translated as “Compromise,” but

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some authors increasingly feel that “Settlement” would be more appropriate. A whole range of terms that relates to language—Umgangsprache (colloquial language, the vernacular), Muttersprache (first language, mother tongue), and Beamtensprache (official language, language of communication), to name but three most obvious examples—have several accepted translations into English, each of them not only legitimate but belonging to a specific historiographic tradition. Moreover, there are further terminological approaches specific to other languages and regions of the empire that we as editors felt should also be respected. Thus, while we did our foremost to bring uniformity to at least the most recurrent terms, in this book it was our conscious decision to respect our authors in their choices of preferred translation, transliteration, and terminology. In our understanding, this book is as stylistically and terminologically coherent as the Habsburg Empire would have ever been. This publication would not have been possible without the generosity of the University of Vienna, the University of Tübingen, and the Hertha Firnberg and Elise Richter Programmes of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, T-602 and V-555), which ensured the success of the international conference “Urban Space and Multilingualism in the Late Habsburg Empire” in 2014, from which this book drew inspiration. The German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media also generously supported the publication; Pasts Inc., Center for Historical Studies at the Central European University provided logistical assistance. As editors we are particularly grateful to Philipp Ther and Oliver Schmitt at the Institute for East European History at the University of Vienna and to Balázs Trencsényi and Mónika Nagy at Pasts Inc. for their time, encouragement, and help when we most needed them, and to Katalin Stráner, Chris Wendt, and Tom Szerecz for their help with preparing the manuscript. We hope that this book will serve as a proof that the effort was well worth it.

Chapter 2

Encounters with Language Diversity in Late Habsburg Austria Pieter M. Judson In 1853 on the eve of the Christian festival of Pentecost or Pfingsten, the renowned orientalist Josef Hammer-Purgstall (1774–1856) addressed the Austrian Academy of Sciences to celebrate the fifth Anniversary of its founding. As Hammer-Purgstall reminded his listeners, the Pentecost holiday celebrated the moment when, according to the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit had descended upon the disciples and followers of Christ in the form of fiery tongues, tongues that represented the many languages of the world. The biblical text tells us, that they “began to speak with other languages, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” When this happened, men of every nation who were staying in Jerusalem were astonished because, the text says, “every man heard the [followers of Christ] speak in his own language.” Those followers had suddenly become what we might today call “urban multilinguals.” After this biblical event, the twelve disciples traveled to the corners of the known world to preach in every language. Hammer-Purgstall himself called Pentecost a “celebration of polyglotia or multilingualism.”1 For Hammer-Purgstall, linguistic diversity held a particular meaning in Austria, and for that reason, the celebration of Pentecost was especially appropriate to the Empire. Vienna was, after all, the center of a state that had been created by joining together many peoples who spoke different languages. Because their business brought “the Magyar, the Bohemian, the Croatian, the Wend, the Pole,” together to Vienna, he argued that this city had always been a showplace for true language diversity. Hammer-Purgstall went on to claim that the very essence of an Austrian identity was rooted in its peoples’ multilingualism: the more languages of the empire one could speak, the more one became a true Austrian. Calling the military, for example, a “great school of multilingualism,” Hammer-Purgstall asked how, for example, an officer could

1  Joseph Baron Hammer-Purgstall, “Vortrag über die Vielsprachigkeit,” in Die feierliche Sitzung der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften am 29. Mai 1852 (Vienna, 1852), 87–100, here 89.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004407978_003

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communicate with his troops or a bureaucrat communicate effectively with the public, if he were not multilingual?2 Hammer-Purgstall did not stop here with his praise for Austria’s linguistic diversity. The reason this diversity was not a characteristic of other empires, he explained, stemmed from the different way in which the Austrians had built their empire. Unlike the Russians, the British, or the French, the Austrians alone had always maintained respect for the use of local languages and had never imposed a single language on their subjects. Other empires brutally forced their languages on the rest of the world, but Austria’s rulers did not challenge the “natural feelings of pride” that all peoples felt for their various mother tongues. This distinctive state-building practice allegedly offered other societies an important model for future global development. HammerPurgstall believed that the very future of Europe—but here he really meant the world—was necessarily a linguistically diverse future. That future increasingly lay in the ability of other societies to adopt the typical practices of Austrian society. In an era of rapidly expanding markets, international trade and commerce, effective communication and translation would be the keys to gaining a more advantageous position both within and outside of Europe. It was clear to him that neither the French, the English, nor the Russian languages could ever achieve complete global dominance. Austria, by virtue of its people’s multilingual character, however, offered an alternative model for the future of Europe. Giving rein to his imagination Hammer-Purgstall pictured Austria taking the lead in international commerce and indeed in international influence, by virtue of its experience with diverse linguistic practices at every level of society.3 Hammer-Purgstall’s vision contained within it several points for further analysis, partly because it was a vision unselfconsciously shared by so many educated public servants in Austria in the mid-nineteenth century, a period in Austrian history to which I refer as the “liberal Empire.”4 As formulated by advocates like Hammer-Purgstall, this vision of a multilingual empire justified an official linguistic status quo whose dimensions seemed so elegantly simple in the abstract. It became increasingly complicated, however, to fulfill the promise of that abstract status quo in practice. This vision also deserves further critical analysis because the legislation, legal decisions, and institutional practices it produced still influence the ways in which we frame questions about language diversity in the Habsburg Monarchy today, and not always in a useful way. 2  Ibid., 98. 3  Ibid., 97. 4  For a discussion of the term “liberal empire,” see Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 218–21.

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Hammer-Purgstall’s argument forces us to recall that multilingual practices were not what made Austria, or later Austria-Hungary, distinct by European standards. Rather it was the particular institutional frameworks in which those linguistically diverse practices took place and in which they gained social meaning that was unique. Thanks to particular institutional practice, multilingual practices became an issue worthy of note, of debate, of conflict, of legislation to a far greater extent than was the case in other European societies in the nineteenth century. Ironically because of this issue, Austria may also have been the only European state whose citizens also enjoyed a constitutional right to be monolingual, the right guaranteed in the so-called December Laws of 1867 not to have to learn a second regional language or Landessprache.5 Multilingual social practices were and remain common phenomena in all of Europe, not simply in the Habsburg Monarchy. There is nothing especially Eastern European or Central European about urban multilingualism, despite many scholars’ habits of defining the region as an exotic mosaic of ethnicity. Diverse linguistic practices have also attracted much attention from historians, sociologists, and anthropologists in the past half century, whether they study nineteenth-century London immigrant neighborhoods or late twentiethcentury Parisian banlieux, whether they investigate Polish- and Germanspeaking working-class communities in the Ruhrgebiet and Upper Silesia, or Czech-speaking working-class enclaves in Dresden or in Transylvania’s industrialized valleys. Historians of migration in particular have been attentive to the phenomenon of urban linguistic diversity in the context of the industrial revolution, of rapid nineteenth-century urbanization, and more recently, in histories of decolonization and the creation of imperial and post-imperial diasporas. Thrown together in urban close quarters, how migrants create new communities and use language in daily life becomes a critical element of how they relate to their host societies, and how those societies deal with their presence.6 5  Austria’s Fundamental Laws of 1867 included the proviso that “In those provinces inhabited by several nationalities public educational institutions should be set up so that without being forced to learn a second language, those nationalities that are in the minority have adequate opportunity for an education in their own language” [my translation]. Quoted in Gerald Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten in der Verfassung und Verwaltung Österreichs, 1848–1918 (Vienna: Verlag der Ö sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1985), 200–201. This provision had been added thanks to demands by influential Bohemian deputies who feared that German speakers in Bohemia might be forced to learn the Czech language (the so-called Sprachenzwang). See also Pieter M. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 124–5. 6  According to one classic account, in 1863 a quarter of the French population spoke no French. See Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1870–1914

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As in other parts of Europe, the rapid growth of Austria-Hungary’s cities and towns, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, created an array of new multilingual situations.7 At the same time, however, the rise of acculturation processes or informal nationalization practices also transformed older urban patterns of linguistic usage decisively. Thus on the one hand, migration created enclaves of multilingualism at the level of the neighborhood, particularly in industrial towns. At the same time, as we know from histories of Pest or Prague (whose populations became far more Magyar- or more Czechspeaking in the mid-nineteenth century), in cities whose importance lay more in their administrative status than in their industrial importance, linguistic profiles could often change thanks to nationalizing policies practiced by local city councils and their organized supporters in nationalist associations. In both kinds of cases—the more industrial or the largely administrative city— the presence of a diverse range of multilingual practices or multilingual spaces in daily life is more typical than atypical for all of nineteenth-century Europe.8 Public awareness of and description of such practices and spaces are hardly exceptional, and of course many accounts of urban linguistic diversity predate the second half of the nineteenth century. Consider, for example, the following description of society in the sleepy southern Styrian town of Maribor/Marburg written in 1847 by a German-speaking observer, well before the onset of rapid urban growth: Life in Marburg is generally carried on in German, although in the immediate surroundings it is influenced in a Slavic sense. Almost all born [authentic] Marburgers can speak both languages; it takes those in the

(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), especially 67. On linguistic diversity in Dresden, Saxony, and the Bohemian Borderlands, see Caitlin Murdock, Changing Places: Society, Culture, and Territory in the Saxon-Bohemian borderlands, 1870–1946 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010). On linguistic diversity in Upper Silesia there are several excellent accounts, most recently Brendan Karch, Nation and Loyalty in a German-Polish Borderland: Upper Silesia, 1848–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 7   For statistics on urban growth, see Helmut Rumpler and Martin Seger, eds., Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. 9, Soziale Strukturen, part 2, Die Gesellschaft der Habsburgermonarchie im Kartenbild. Verwaltungs-, Sozial- und Infrastrukturen. Nach dem Zensus von 1910 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), 106–7. 8  For two critical examples of changing urban linguistic practice, see Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague 1861–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); and Robert Nemes, The Once and Future Budapest (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005).

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serving classes about a year of living in the town [to learn German]. The latter belong almost completely to the Wendish (Slovene) people.9 The observer went on to report, by the way, that the “Slav peasantry” in the surrounding districts was also quite affluent. Alluding to the growing commercial networks that linked Maribor/Marburg to cities further south, the author described how local peasant women came to the weekly market dressed in traditional Slavic Tracht but decorated with fine Venetian veils. Here he portrays both local linguistic diversity and trans-regional cultural connections in the very same sentence. A description of larger towns like Pest in Hungary or Brody in Galicia (not to mention the port of Trieste) from the same period would also have remarked on comparable phenomena.10 However, it is important to keep in mind that, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, we could of course have encountered quite similar descriptions of multilingualism in neighborhoods in most European cities and towns from Spain to Russia. The local existence of diverse linguistic practices was debated, discussed, and problematized in European cities and towns of all sizes around 1900. Nationalists in particular focused on these phenomena, worrying that communities of linguistic minorities would either lose their national language by assimilating, or that they would constitute nationalist fifth columns that might subvert the so-called host nation. As we will see below, these anxieties represented political concerns more than anything else. But it is hardly surprising in an age when ethnic or linguistic nationhood became debated in increasingly demographic and then eugenic terms all over Europe, that nationalists should focus on multilingual practices as a point of particular anxiety. Contemporary accounts of life in cities that experienced migration from neighboring regions often demonstrate a point that would have been difficult for anxious nationalists and many historians to accept: that urban migrants who spoke other languages and who created organizations for themselves, 9  Rudolf Gustav Puff, Marburg in Steiermark, seine Umgebung, Bewohner und Geschichte, 2 vols. (Graz: Leykam, 1847), vol. 1, 258. For more on this question in Marburg/Maribor, see Karin Almasy, Wie aus Marburgern “Slowenen” und “Deutsche” wurden (Graz: Pavelhaus, 2014). The term Wend referred to speakers of the Alpine Slav language that would also be called Slovene by the mid-nineteenth century. 10  See Nemes, Once and Future Budapest; Börries Kuzmany, Brody. Eine galizische Grenzstadt im langen 19. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Böhlau, 2011); Anna Millo, “Trieste 1830–1870: From Cosmopolitanism to the Nation,” in Different Paths to the Nation, 1830–1870, ed. Laurence Cole (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Dominique Reill, Nationalists Who Feared the Nation: Adriatic Multi-Nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).

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usually did so without defining themselves in nationalist terms. Wenzel Holek, an itinerant Bohemian worker who wrote a well-known memoir, observed on his arrival at a Dresden glass factory in 1904, that “I got off my bicycle, exhausted [from the trip across the border], listened, and heard Polish, Russian, Czech, and German altogether.”11 Holek and other Czech-speaking workers organized or belonged to social organizations that provided them with centers for afterwork socializing in their home language. In Dresden (or Dražd’any), for example, where Holek had arrived in 1904, communities of Czech workers had already organized a Czech social club some forty years before. The existence of such clubs occasionally drew excited attention from both Czech and German nationalists. Radical German nationalists in Germany, somewhat hysterically and based on no evidence, believed such voluntary social organizations constituted advance shock troops for the eventual Slavicization of Germany. Back in Bohemia, at the same time, Czech nationalist organizations hoped that such clubs would prevent the de-nationalization through assimilation to Germanness of “their people” working in Germany. Both groups of nationalists intentionally misread the purpose of such social clubs in order to pursue their own political agendas. In the Dresden case, as historian Caitlin Murdock tells us, the Saxon government paid absolutely no attention to the complaints of German nationalists. In fact, after a meeting that celebrated the fortieth anniversary of one of these associations in 1909, Dresden police noted that despite a sharp rise in Czech-speaking immigrant labor, they found absolutely no signs of Czech nationalist agitation.12 As some of the articles in this volume suggest, we need to look well beyond such organized associations to understand the range and meanings of diverse linguistic practices and spaces in Habsburg Central Europe. When our German-speaking author maintained about Maribor/Marburg in 1847, for example, that it only took “those in the serving classes about a year of living in the town [to learn German],” it reminds us that learning a language in a functional sense could involve very different forms of knowledge, and it also tells us about other social situations that involved multilingual practices. Additionally, it raises the question of how different publics interpreted the phenomena of diverse daily-life linguistic practices or gave them significance. How did people manage the demands of communication that might arise in multilingual urban neighborhoods, in military barracks, in shops, cafes, pubs, or in popular 11  Wenzel Holek, Vom Handarbeiter zum Jugenderzieher (Jena: Eugen Dietrichs, 1921), 1, quoted in Caitlin Murdock, Changing Places: Society, Culture, and Territory in the SaxonBohemian borderlands, 1870–1946 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 47. 12  Murdock, Changing Places, especially 48–52; 72–80.

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theater entertainments? For veterans, for example, how did a sense of honor and loyalty to the Emperor combine with pride in their particular regiment’s service but also pride in their regional language?13 From the linguistic practices of military recruits or veterans to the habitual behavior of the public in cafés or theatres, from the expectations of audiences for film exhibitions or scientific lectures, all of these settings involved at least gestures to different language use and sometimes performance of multilingual identifications. The same multilingual practices referred to by our Maribor/Marburg author could also involve the most intimate of settings, for example a single household or a small business where domestic servants or assistants and apprentices spoke enough of the language of the family for whom they worked to do their jobs adequately. Multilingual practices occasionally extended to relations of extraordinary closeness and personal or sexual intimacy as well, such as that between masters and servants living in the same house, between husbands and wives, or between parents and their children. Nationalists certainly made much of the danger of what they referred to as “mixed marriages,” but of course the reality of such relationships was hardly so simple or so easily classifiable in a single category.14 To return briefly to the case of Wenzel Holek, he also documented the many ways in which such multilingual intimacy extended to close living arrangements among workers themselves. Holek noted, for example, that “the international character of the factory meant that it was not uncommon to find three nationalities together in one apartment” and probably even together in one room. Holek’s own sister presided over a household that functioned bilingually in both Czech and German.15 13  Laurence Cole, Military Culture and Popular Patriotism in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Rok Stergar, “Die Bevölkerung der slowenischen Ländern und die allgemeine Wehrpflicht,” in Glanz—Gewalt—Gehorsam. Militär und Gesellschaft in der Habsburgermonarchie (1800 bis 1918), ed. Laurence Cole, Christa Hämmerle and Martin Scheutz (Klartext: Essen, 2011), 129–52; Rok Stergar, “National Indifference in the Heyday of Nationalist Mobilization? Ljubljana Military Veterans and the Language of Command,” in Austrian History Yearbook 43 (2012). On military and wartime practice, see Tamara Scheer, “Die k.u.k. Regimentssprachen: Eine Institutionalisierung der Sprachenvielfalt in der Habsburgermonarchie (1867/8–1914),” in Sprache, Gesellschaft und Nation in Ostmitteleuropa. Institutionalisierung und Alltagspraxis, ed. Martina Niedhammer et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 75–92; Scheer, “Habsburg Languages at War: ‘The linguistic confusion at the tower of Babel couldn’t have been much worse,’” in Languages and the First World War, vol. 1, Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War, ed. Christophe Declercq & Julian Walker (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 62–78. 14  On the alleged dangers of mixed marriages see for example, J. Zemmrich, Sprachgrenze und Deutschtum in Böhmen (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1902), 67. 15  Wenzel Holek, Vom Handarbeiter, 3, 14, cited in Murdock, Changing Places, 47.

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These are well-known examples, and they barely scratch the surface of the extent or character of diverse linguistic practices and social relations in Austro-Hungarian society. A further issue raised by the articles in this volume, for example, addresses practices of translation, both at the level of written and official texts, and also at the level of language use on the street.16 It should not surprise us that multilingual situations produced hybrid linguistic practices, and that these practices developed and flourished in particular urban contexts. But how do we study these and the other practices I have mentioned without problematizing them as unique, without smothering them in an ahistoric nostalgia for “the World of Yesterday” (Die Welt von Gestern), or, most importantly, without using the categories left to us by the people who worried about them the most: the nationalist activists?17 I have emphasized that society in the Habsburg Monarchy was little different from society in other European states when it came to incidences, practices, and spaces of linguistic diversity. However, some elements related to multilingualism were indeed unique to Habsburg society. First, institutional, legal, judicial, and political systems in Cisleithania took account of linguistic diversity to a far greater extent than in other European states. Secondly, because of the ways in which imperial institutions did take account of the presence of many languages, political significance quickly became attached to linguistic practice both in public life (government institutions), and later in those more private contexts such as in businesses, in practices of consumption, in sexual habits, and especially in family life. Linguistic diversity obviously involved practices of communication and expression, but what made Austria-Hungary distinctive are the ways in which those practices were assigned particular shared meanings, the ways in which they were codified, regulated, and also manipulated symbolically in public political life. And this adds yet a further dimension to the Habsburg case, albeit one that is occasionally present in other cases, and that is the element of performance. Linguistic usage gained such a high degree of symbolic significance in some public situations that one could see it as an ostentatious form of performance or display. At times people in public performed their loyalty to a nationalist cause, for example, by speaking in a certain way, or refusing to respond to multilingual practice. On the other hand,

16   On official translation and translators, see Michaela Wolf, Die vielsprachige Seele Kakaniens. Übersetzen und Dolmetschen in der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2015). 17  Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2017).

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performance could as well demonstrate a public openness to or encouragement of multilingual practice. The ways in which linguistic diversity came to be codified in public, governmental situations, however, actually limited the official recognition of several forms of multilingual practice. Although the well-known Kremsier constitutional draft or the December Laws of 1867 (both for the Austrian half of the Monarchy) or the Hungarian Nationalities Law (1868), or linguistic practice in the Austro-Hungarian military each promoted a fundamental respect for the different languages used by Austrian or Austro-Hungarian citizens, official recognition only extended to a limited number of languages in a limited number of settings. Court judgments confirmed, for example, that a language like Yiddish in Galicia or Czech in Vienna and Lower Austria did not merit the linguistic rights guaranteed to the Volksstämme by Austria’s Fundamental Laws.18 In Hungary the functional application of the originally quite liberal language law closed off recognition of, to say nothing of encouragement, of multilingualism in regional and national settings. These laws and their application have been the subject of intensive scholarship, and it is certainly not new to us. I mention it, however, to point to the paradox that while Austria and Hungary assigned fundamental rights to linguistic practice in a degree to which no other European states did, in practice these political rights treated language users as if they were belonging to blocks of people located in particular territories. In Hungary they applied to individual speakers of languages. There, the law would not recognize linguistic rights for groups. People often could only exercise those rights fully if they remained in those territories.19 The laws barely 18  Some Jewish nationalists argued in the highest courts in Cisleithania that Jews should be recognized as a Volksstamm for political and institutional purposes in Bukovina and Galicia and not only as a religious community. The courts, however, ruled that because Jews throughout the Monarchy used several different languages, they could not be defined as a Volksstamm like the others groups whose status was defined by their use of a single common language. Gerald Stourzh, “Max Diamant and Jewish Diaspora Nationalism in the Bukovina,” in From Vienna to Chicago and Back: Essays on Intellectual History and Political Thought in Europe and America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 190– 203. In the case of Czech speakers in Lower Austria and Vienna, highly questionable local government intervention in the census determined that not enough people spoke Czech to give it the official status of landesüblich (and to justify the creation of Czech minority schools in Vienna). 19   For analyses of the language laws and their application in Cisleithania and Transleithania, see Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung; Hannelore Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachengerechtigkeit im österreichischen Unterrichtswesen 1867–1918 (Vienna: Verlag der Ö sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1995); Joachim von Puttkamer, Schulalltag und nationale Integration in Ungarn. Slowaken, Rumänen, und Siebenbürger Sachsen in der Auseinandersetzung mit der ungarischen Staatsidee, 1867–1914 (Munich:

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took account of the actual diversity of linguistic practice in Habsburg Central Europe that migration produced in the second half of the nineteenth century. To give just a small obvious example, a Croatian-speaker from Dalmatia where Croatian was considered landesüblich, would not have enjoyed the same right to use the Croatian language in communication with local civil servants, or to schooling in Croatian after moving to the Upper Austrian capital city of Linz, where Croatian was not considered landesüblich. The rights attached to speakers of particular languages were also asymmetric in another more famous sense. In Hungary the Magyar language, and in Austria the German language (to a lesser extent Polish, Italian, and Czech) carried with them certain privileges not shared by the other languages. Most obviously German was the language of military command, and the internal language of communication within the Austrian Imperial bureaucracy. Of course early on a strong sense of privileged cultural capital attached to knowledge of German, although this sense gradually diminished over time. Even HammerPurgstall had commented on this fact, although with the typical attitude of a mid-nineteenth-century liberal he did not see it as necessarily prejudicial toward any other language in use. In fact, he saw the interregional use of German as a sign of greater unity in the multilingual empire. When Hammer-Purgstall spoke of those Magyars, Bohemians, Croats, Poles, or Wends mentioned earlier who “each came to Vienna to do business,” he added that they “all did that business in German, without therefore feeling that they had been disloyal to their mother tongues”20 [emphasis mine]. Moreover, he argued that the German bureaucrat would learn the language of the region where he serves, just as the non-German will learn German. The military, where non-German speakers learned German, and German-speakers learned the many languages of the recruits with whom they served, he called the “greatest school for multilingualism in the Reich.”21 Hammer-Purgstall’s vision tells us nothing, however, about common practice, and in particular how, for example, military men (or even more importantly veterans) negotiated the complex relationships between language use, status, self-identification as part of the imperial military, and pride in a national language.22

De Gruyter, 2003); Ágoston Berecz, The Politics of Early Language Teaching: Hungarian in the Primary Schools of the Late Dual Monarchy (Budapest: CEU Press, 2013). 20   Hammer-Purgstall, “Vortrag über die Vielsprachigkeit,” 94–5. 21  Ibid., 98. 22  On questions around language use and the military, especially in terms of veterans’ organizations, see the many cases analyzed in Cole, Military Culture; Stergar, “Die Bevölkerung der slowenischen Ländern und die allgemeine Wehrpflicht”; Stergar, “National

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The very asymmetry of the legal positions and cultural images of these languages opened up enormous spaces for the effective practice of a popular politics based on issues of language use. This in turn helps us to understand why nationalism could be such a powerful force when it came to elections and popular politics on the one hand, and how on the other hand it could often be unimportant when it came to more daily-life concerns in society. Political conflicts over language usage were not direct products of linguistic diversity itself. The simple coexistence in the same city neighborhood of people who spoke different languages in different situations did not create national conflict. Instead, conflict centered on the institutional, legal, and legislative recognition and regulation of different languages used in public life. These in turn encouraged a massive politicization of language use, when local, regional, and imperial politicians demanded that particular laws be fulfilled more justly in both Cisleithania and Transleithania. This recognition should not diminish the significance of political conflicts around language use in schools, on street signs, or on railway tickets, to name some examples. These conflicts offered nationalists critical ways to organize public activism in the age of mass mobilization that blossomed in the 1880s and 1890s. But because of the historical claims often made by nationalists in the successor states after 1918, there still remains a general belief among much of the public—visible most recently in the public discussions in Europe and the United States surrounding the Russian occupation of Crimea and covert war against Ukraine—that political conflict is fundamentally caused by the very fact of linguistic diversity. This presumption absolves journalists and historians from facing up to the complex and historical ways in linguistic diversity was made problematic in particular institutional and political contexts. Concerned about the general health of their nation as expressed through the numbers of people who spoke their language, nationalists claimed they needed to erect barriers between language communities. Otherwise, they argued, their nation would lose members to a rival nation through dangerous processes of acculturation and ultimately through what they called “denationalization.” The concept of a necessary frontier to separate peoples is as relevant to urban life as it was to rural landscapes. What happened in an urban neighborhood bakery was just as important to the nationalist imagination as what happened in a rural village. Thanks to its particular spatial dimensions, the city could be particularly dangerous to nationalists as a site of potential

Indifference in the Heyday of Nationalist Mobilization? Ljubljana Military Veterans and the Language of Command,” in Austrian History Yearbook 43 (2012).

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acculturation, and it was especially in the city setting where a person might lose her or his national distinctiveness. The kinds of barriers nationalists sought to erect were physical, social, and cultural in character, and as with their activism in rural regions, nationalists used the decennial censuses to know where to construct these barriers. The census allegedly offered nationalists both a general progress report on the status of their nation within the Empire, and it indicated which communities and neighborhoods were most endangered, by contrasting language statistics with outcomes from ten or twenty years earlier. In his famous study of the Prague German community, Gary Cohen concluded long ago that the existence of a social network of associations organized around language use tended to prevent speakers of one language from switching languages completely when they migrated and found themselves in a linguistic minority.23 At the same time, however, nationalist activists used other kinds of arguments to erect barriers and to prevent speakers of their language from becoming denationalized as they called it. By 1900 activists had raised impressive sums of money and had founded minority schools to save children from the fate of denationalization. More than that, however, starting in Bohemia but spreading to other crown lands, activists gradually developed sophisticated welfare programs targeted at the poor and vulnerable (orphans) to prevent them from denationalization. And as we know from Tara Zahra’s work, these welfare activists mobilized psychologists, teachers, and social theorists to argue that multilingual practices jeopardized the normal healthy development of the child.24 All of these potential barriers erected by nationalists increased public discussion of these issues but perhaps the chapters in this volume will tell us more about what effect they may actually have had on diverse neighborhood linguistic practices. Of course the practices and sites of multilingualism discussed here did not end completely with the fall of the Monarchy, and Habsburg law often influenced the ways in which national and international law dealt with what were called after 1918 “minority questions,” especially in the interwar period. However, there is one final point—really a question—that I want to raise with regard to the diversity of linguistic practices in Austria-Hungary. The Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary are often called “multicultural,” to contrast them 23  Cohen, Politics of Ethnic Survival; Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). 24  Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands 1900–1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008); “‘Each Nation Cares Only for its Own’: Empire, Nation, and Child Welfare Activism in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1918,” in American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (December 2006): 1378–1402.

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to the self-styled nation states of the rest of Europe. Social scientists and journalists use several measures to describe cultural difference, including confessional differences, but most often they rely on statistics of language use. Linguistic diversity, they argue, reflects the coexistence of several different cultures. I have my doubts about this, and some of my doubts stem directly from the very proliferation of multilingual spaces that the articles in this volume discuss. It seems to me that nation state ideologists raise this equivalence of linguistic diversity and multiculturalism as a way of deflecting their own anxieties about the possible lack of cultural unity still haunting their own national societies, thanks largely to increasing unease around questions of migration. Austria-Hungary is supposedly an object lesson both as an allegedly doomed society, but also as an object of nostalgia thanks to its allegedly multicultural character. Are we perhaps too willing to see practices of linguistic diversity as indicators of the coexistence of many different cultures? In some situations different languages very much reflect the presence of different cultures, but what if this equation is not always true? What if we examine other cultural indicators and learn that despite the presence of multilingualism, inhabitants of some cities and towns in the late Habsburg Empire had culturally far more in common with each other than they had with their linguistic brothers and sisters in other parts of the empire?25 By paying attention to linguistic practices and their possible meanings at the local level, we may learn that people shared more characteristics and habits across language use when they lived in a similar setting, than when they lived in fundamentally different settings. I have argued elsewhere, for example, that we cannot meaningfully speak of “Germans” or of a German nation in the Habsburg Monarchy precisely because those who spoke German came from such radically diverse geographic, class, educational, religious and even linguistic backgrounds.26 To presume that they saw themselves as part of a shared community may be going too far. They may have shared a common language in the census; statisticians and state planners may have categorized them in a single unit; but this might be all that they shared.

25  P  ieter M. Judson, “Do Multiple Languages Mean a Multicultural Society? Nationalist ‘Frontiers’ in Rural Austria, 1880–1918,” in Understanding Multiculturalism and the Habsburg Central European Experience, ed. Gary Cohen and Johannes Feichtinger (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 61–82. 26  Pieter M. Judson, “When Is a Diaspora not a Diaspora? Rethinking Nation-Centered Narratives about Germans in Habsburg East-Central Europe,” in The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries Of Germanness, ed. Krista O’Donnell, Renate Bridenthal, and Nancy Reagin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 219–47.

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On the other hand, speakers of different languages in some cities, towns, and even regions may have shared many elements of the same culture. For this reason we should be careful not to exaggerate perceptions of difference that may blind us to cultural commonalities based on common experiences, class, and educational backgrounds. It might help if we could detach multilingualism from multiculturalism altogether in our thinking. We might then accept practices of linguistic diversity as more normal, and not always as exceptional (or even as pathological). Multilingualism might not need to be seen as a sign of social or political weakness. We might also understand more clearly the different dynamics of personal identification that develop in particular sites of multilingual practice. What kinds of meaning did people in those very different situations actually attribute to language use? To return to the example of Wenzel Holek, he remarked that the men with whom he worked and lived spoke different languages, just as he remarked on the multilingual character of the most intimate of relations within his sister’s family. When he wrote his life’s story he was also well aware of the ways in which Czech and German nationalists had hoped to capture him for their nation as a child at school. He also recounted his parents’ hope that he would learn more than one language for purposes of achieving greater social mobility. His story at least emphasizes the commonalities he encountered in his movements across a multilingual Central Europe. Commonalities might be as important as the differences to which we have all become far too accustomed.

Chapter 3

The Fight for the National Linguistic Primacy: Testimonies from the Austrian Littoral Marta Verginella 1 Introduction As in other multiethnic and multilingual areas of the Habsburg Monarchy, the recognition of linguistic rights in the largest urban centers of the Austrian Littoral became one of the central issues facing nationally competitive camps from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards. Pieter M. Judson maintains that in the Habsburg Monarchy the recognition of nations as “real corporate entities” occurred through the official use of a language: “While the state tried to avoid giving rights specifically to ‘nations,’ preferring to recognize the rights of ‘language groups,’ nationalist activists made sure that in public debate over issues such as the Imperial census results, linguistic issues were understood as national ones.”1 In the period of increasing nationalisms, language became a fundamental and publicly identifiable attribute of a given nationally imagined community.2 “Written language became the principal tool of creating national cohesion,”3 and the struggle for its instruction and official use became one of the central issues of nationalist struggles in multiethnic environments. Efforts aiming at the creation of ethnolinguistic homogeneity in the empire’s multiethnic environs were attributable not only to the national elites’ demands and actions but also to the very stance of the state that chose language as an ethnic marker.4 According to Tomasz Kamusella, by including the “linguistic question” into the official population census without enabling the recording of multilingualism, the monarchy “did not merely ‘measure nations,’ 1  Pieter M. Judson, “Introduction: Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe,” in Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe, ed. Pieter M. Judson and Marsha L. Rozenblit (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 3. 2  Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2016), 303–9. 3  Tomasz Kamusella, The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 25. 4  Kamusella, The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe, 10.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004407978_004

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but rather created them.”5 By encouraging the decision to enter this or that national community, not only nationalist activists were in operation, but also the state, which with its laws and institutional practices directed individuals’ sense of national belonging and strengthened or weakened multilingualism in a given area. Excluding several research projects6 that attempted to encompass nationalization processes in the Austrian Littoral (in German, Österreichisches Küstenland; in Italian, Litorale austriaco; and in Slovene, Avstrijsko primorje) in line with concepts offered by internationally referenced studies of nationalism,7 we can state that the analysis of the nationalization process in this part of the Habsburg Monarchy8 has been insufficient in interrogating “the battle on the language frontier.”9 Not only have the Italian and Slovene historiographies

5  Ibid., 49. 6  Marina Cattaruzza, ed., Nazionalismi di frontiera: identità contrapposte sull’Adriatico nordorientale 1850–1950 (Soveria Manelli: Rubbettino Editore, 2003); Rolf Wörsdörfer, Krisenherd Adria 1915–1955. Konstruktion und Artikulation des Nationalen im italienisch-jugoslawischen Grenzraum (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2004); Roberto Scarciglia, ed., Trieste multiculturale. Comunità e linguaggi di integrazione (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011); Borut Klabjan, “‘Scramble for Adria’: Discourses of Appropriation of the Adriatic Space Before and After World War I,” Austrian History Yearbook 42 (2011): 16–32; Vanni D’Alessio, Il cuore conteso: il nazionalismo in una comunità multietnica: l’Istria asburgica (Naples: Filema, 2003); Dominique Kirchner Reill, Nationalists Who Feared the Nation: Adriatic Multi-Nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). 7  See, for example, Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions for National Revival. Comparative Analyses of Social Composition of Patriotic Groups Among the Smaller European Nations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); Hroch, “The Social Interpretation of Linguistic Demands in European National Movements,” in Regional and National Identities in Europe in the XIXth and XXth Centuries, ed. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Michael G. Müller, and Stuart Woolf (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1998), 67–96; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). 8  In 1912, Angelo Vivante pointed out the similar organization of the Italian and Slovene national movements; however, for decades his transnational approach was deemed unacceptable both by the Italian and Slovene historiography, which were tied to the national or nationalistic paradigms. 9  Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 2.

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dealing with nineteenth-century history remained in the grip of nationalist paradigms, but in doing so they have neglected an examination of the ways in which a national consensus is acquired and national stability is organized, as well as how “bi- and multilingualism” is abolished and modified in urban and rural environments. Last but not least, studies that considered the recognition of linguistic rights in the largest urban centers of the Austrian Littoral to be one of the central political issues around which nationally competitive camps clashed from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards also have failed to provide an in-depth comparative and transnational examination of the phenomenon.10 It should be added that research on the diversity of linguistic practices in the Austrian Littoral covering the public and private spheres in both urban and rural environments and from a long-term perspective is yet to be carried out.11 This chapter will focus on the practices associated with the use of Slovene in Trieste in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century, when the ecclesiastical and secular authorities accepted it as the language of the (predominately rural) minority—an issue mostly ignored by twentieth-century historiography. This also meant the escalation of national friction, which in provincial centers—not only in Trieste but also in Gorizia—initially led to the restriction of traditional multilingual practice in churches, and later on to a policy of exclusion and the violation of the Slovene-speaking minority’s linguistic rights, which were guaranteed by the Austrian constitution of 1867 and the Act of 1869. Up to the dissolution of the monarchy, advocates of the equal use of Slovene in public were faced with the resistant attitudes of representatives of the opposing nationally competitive camp in both provincial centers of Trieste and Gorizia.12 10  Carlo Schiffrer, Sguardo storico sui rapporti tra Italiani e Slavi nella Venezia Giulia (Trieste: Istituto di Storia Moderna dell’Università di Trieste, 1946); Ernesto Sestan, Venezia Giulia. Lineamenti di una storia etnica e culturale (Rome: Edizioni Italiane, 1947); Elio Apih, Trieste (Rome; Bari: Laterza, 1988). 11  On the need to examine linguistic practices over the long run, see R.J.W. Evans, “Language and State Building: The Case of the Habsburg Monarchy,” Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 3. 12   On the political struggle regarding the linguistic question in Austria see Judson, Guardians of the Nation; on Lower Styria, see Janez Cvirn, Trdnjavski trikotnik: Politična orientacija Nemcev na Spodnjem Štajerskem (1861–1914) [Fortress triangle, Germans’ political orientation in Lower Styria (1861–1914)] (Maribor: Obzorja, 1997); individual aspects of this question are featured in the Slovene historiography addressed by Branko Marušič, Pregled politične zgodovine Slovencev na Goriškem [An overview of Slovenes’ political history in the Goriška region] (Nova Gorica: Goriški muzej, 2005); and Peter Vodopivec,

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This chapter will also feature an analysis of testamentary practices in urban centers and in the countryside that will show that in the nineteenth century Slovene was spoken mostly in rural areas, predominately in districts and municipalities where local authority resided firmly in the hands of Slovenespeaking political representatives. The case of the municipality of Dolina is significant, where testators of both genders expressed their last will in Italian or German during the first half of the nineteenth century, while in the second half of the century they increasingly opted for Slovene. The choice of the language in which they expressed their testamentary intention is a reflection of the fact that Slovene had established itself in practical usage, which was directly associated with the spread of national awareness supported by local authorities, but not necessarily by all members of the local community.13 A similar practice cannot be observed, for instance, in that part of the Triestine (and partly also the Gorizian) countryside that was at the time overwhelmingly inhabited by a Slovene-speaking population but belonged administratively to the municipality of Trieste or Gorizia. 2

“Native Languages” in Old-Regime Trieste

The city of Trieste, which was granted the status of a free port by Charles VI in 1719, two years after the proclamation of free navigation in the Adriatic, underwent important commercial and economic growth during the reign of Maria Teresa (1740–1780) and her son Joseph II (1780–90).14 Due to customs relief and immunities, merchants of various religious backgrounds (Jewish, Protestant, and Orthodox) and ethnicities (ranging from Serbian, Greek, German, and

Od Pohlinove slovnice do samostojne države: Slovenska zgodovina od konca 18. stoletja do konca 20. stoletja [From Pohlin’s grammar book to the independent state: Slovene history from the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century] (Ljubljana: Modrijan, 2006), 51–138. 13  On the characteristics of testamentary practices in the Triestine countryside, see Marta Verginella, Ekonomija odrešenja in preživetja: odnos do življenja in smrti na tržaškem podeželju [Economy of salvation and survival: The attitude towards life and death in Trieste’s countryside] (Koper: Zgodovinsko društvo za južno primorsko: Znanstveno raziskovalno središče Republike Slovenije, 1996); in Italian, see Verginella, Terre e lasciti: pratiche testamentarie nel contado triestino fra Otto e Novecento (Trieste: Beit, 2016). 14  Lois C. Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).

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Dutch to Armenian) began to settle in the city. In the new emporium emerging outside the medieval city walls, the cosmopolitan assemblage of merchants chose a colloquial version of Italian as their lingua franca.15 The language of the street, which preserved some Friulian additions, was also used in commodity exchange; however, when communicating with the imperial authorities appointed by Vienna, German was used. As Rienzo Pellegrini has argued, individuals who formed the nazione triestina (Triestine nation) in multilingual and polyglot Trieste of the eighteenth and nineteenth century used one language in the street and while doing business, another in their contacts with the authorities, and a third at home.16 As a rule, the immigrants’ original language was preserved in their domestic environments, which means that immigrants from the nearby Slovene-speaking hinterland preserved their Slovene language in the urban environment, at least in the first generation.17 According to the linguist Pavel Merkù, one-third of Trieste’s population spoke Slovene: along with immigrant workers and local peasants, the language was spoken by a portion of tradesmen. Triestine patricians, who had estates in the city’s Slovenespeaking surroundings and in the hinterland, were also familiar with Slovene.18 The French journalist and author Charles Yriarte (1832–1898), one of the travelers who visited the city in the nineteenth century, positively highlighted its multiethnic character, or the cohabitation of Italian, Austrian, and Slav elements within the city: “The Italians live in Trieste as in Italy; they refer to their language, race, memory, and proximity. The Austrians rule gently, mildly, and with kindness; their property gives them the right to do so. As far as Slavs are concerned, their number speaks in their favor as they encircle [the city] from all sides.”19 Several decades earlier, the imperial and royal official Joseph Brodman

15  On the concept of Italian as a lingua franca, see Roberto Finzi, “La base materiale dell’italofonia di Trieste”, in Storia economica e sociale di Trieste, vol. 1, La città dei gruppi 1719–1918, ed. Roberto Finzi and Giovanni Panjek (Trieste: Lint, 2001), 317–31, particularly 325. 16  Rienzo Pellegrini, “Per un profilo linguistico”, in Storia economica e sociale di Trieste, vol. 1, 294–5. 17  Aleksej Kalc, Tržaško prebivalstvo v 18. stoletju: priseljevanje kot gibalo demografske rasti in družbenih sprememb [Trieste’s population in the eighteenth century: Immigration as the motor of demographic growth and social change] (Koper: Zgodovinsko društvo za južno primorsko: Znanstveno raziskovalno središče Republike Slovenije, 2008). 18  Pavel Merkù, “La presenza slovena nella città preemporiale”, in Storia economica e sociale di Trieste, vol. 1, 288. 19  C. Yriarte, Trieste e l’Istria (Milan: Treves, 1875), 9. The editor of the Italian publication highlights the author’s “biased” perception of the places he visited. In the footnotes, the

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had seen Trieste in a similar light. In this city, where Dalmatians, Turks, Greeks, Italians, Germans, Arabs, Englishmen, and Carniolans20 lived side by side, tolerance prevailed and, according to him, so did reciprocal indifference.21 The stated observations were not merely the expressions of eccentric and biased travelers and observers: in 1776 Tommaso Ustia and Giuseppe Bellusco, both representatives of the city council and school inspectors appointed by the intendant Count Zinzendorf, advocated that Slavic (Slovene or Illyrian) and Italian be taught in local primary schools alongside German. They defined both languages as native, or as languages spoken in Trieste. In their demand, which they justified with requirements related to commerce, the city’s geographic position, and neighboring lands, they treated both languages as equal. They also said that it was necessary for the population of Trieste to be familiar with the grammatical rules of both languages:22 The city’s nature and the needs of commerce do not allow that the Italian, Slavic, and Illyrian languages be forgotten, otherwise neighbors, subjects of the most serene ruler (Augustissima Sovrana), and sailors visiting the port of Trieste would not understand one another. In Trieste, German cannot be the sole common and native language; Italian and

editor offers a correction of Yriarte’s writing, particularly in regard to relations between respective ethnic communities in Trieste and Istria: “Yriarte, just as many other foreigners, had a preconceived notion that Istria was Slavic, and as he visited it with this notion, he was surprised by the fact that civil life presented itself basically in the Italian aspect. His narrative thus appears to contradict the theory with which he aims to justify what was said. We merely wish to point to some of these inaccuracies and remind the Italian reader that the land visited by the French author belongs to us” (ibid., vi–vii). See also Giulio Cervani, La Trieste ottocentesca nella descrizione di un viaggiatore francese (Udine: Del Bianco, 1983), 14–15. 20  In Triestine documents of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, the term not only referred to the population of Carniola but also to Triestines speaking the language that was widely used in Carniola and in other Slovene-speaking parts of Austria. 21  Giuseppe de Brodman, Memorie politico-economiche della città e territorio di Trieste, della penisola d’Istria, della Dalmazia fu Veneta, di Ragusi e dell’Albania, ora congiunti all’Austriaco Impero (Venice: Alvisopoli, 1821), 13. 22  On the inclusion of Italian and Illyrian (in Triestine documents, the term refers to, as a rule, Serbo-Croatian and occasionally also to Slovene) or Carniolan in primary schools, see Diana De Rosa, Libro di scorno, libro d’onore. La scuola elementare triestina durante l’amministrazione austriaca (1761–1918) (Udine: Del Bianco, 1991), 29–31. On the distinction between Illyrian and Carniolan see also ibid., 33.

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Slavic must exist side by side with it, otherwise one could never engage in trade or negotiations.23 The effect of the demands put forward by the inspectors was noticeable as early as March 1777, when the local school gave a teaching post to a candidate who could teach in “Carniolan” (Slovene) and had a command of “Illyrian” (Croatian) as well.24 That this was not just a single instance is confirmed by the demand made by the city’s authorities a year earlier, according to which a post at an institution for the poor was to be given to a former Jesuit versed in hearing confessions in Italian, Slovene, and German.25 In Triestine Catholic churches of the second half of the eighteenth century, religious rites were performed in either Italian or Slovene, while in nonCatholic churches the predominant language of each religious community was in use. In the Church of Our Lady of the Sea (Madonna del Mare), divine services were performed in “Lingua Schiava et Illirica” (Slavic and Illyrian language) until 1787, when the church was closed.26 It was known as the church attended by people from the surroundings of Trieste, and served as the seat of the Brotherhood of the Blessed Mother of God. Peasants from the surrounding villages joined the brotherhood active in the Holy Rosary Church, where Sunday school was held in Slovene.27 Sermons in Slovene were a regular occurrence also in the Jesuit Church of St. Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore) until the order’s dissolution in 1773. From the seventeenth century onwards, the Jesuits paid special attention to Slovene-speaking believers in the city and its surroundings. The catechism was taught in “Carniolan” and their sermons in Slovene attracted a “large number of people of Carniolan origin who lived in the old but also in the new city, particularly servants.”28 Slovene continued

23  C  esareo Regio Governo per il Litorale in Trieste, 27 November 1776, quoted in De Rosa, Libro di scorno, libro d’onore, 30–3. 24  Ibid., 331. See also Drago Pahor, “Pregled razvoja osnovnega šolstva na zahodnem robu slovenskega ozemlja” [An overview of the development of primary education in the westernmost part of Slovene territory], in Osnovna šola na Slovenskem: 1869–1969 [Primary schooling in Slovene ethnic territory: 1869–1969], ed. Vlado Schmidt, Vasilij Melik, and France Ostanek (Ljubljana: Slovenski šolski muzej, 1970), 235–337. 25  Finzi, “La base materiale dell’italofonia di Trieste,” 324. 26  Carlo Leone Curiel, Trieste settecentesca (Naples: Sandron, 1922), 7. 27  Archivio Diplomatico Trieste (AST), Chiesa SS. Rosario, folder 15 G 8. 28  Apih, Trieste, 112; Tomaž Simčič, “Cenni sulla presenza slovena nella chiesa triestina”, in Cattolici a Trieste: nell’impero austro-ungarico, nell’Italia monarchica e fascista, sotto i nazisti, nel secondo dopoguerra e nell’Italia democratica, ed. Angelo Bartolomasi (Trieste: Lint, 2003), 473–4; see also Giuseppe Cuscito, “Il ritorno dei gesuiti e la nuova chiesa del

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to be used in religious rites performed in the Triestine churches in the first half of the nineteenth century. Between 1832 and 1845 the use of Slovene was supported particularly by the bishop of Trieste-Koper, Matevž Ravnikar, who was active in the ranks of the intelligentsia that strived for the establishment of a standard Slovene language.29 In the 1830s, the governor (Statthalter) of Trieste, Count Franz Stadion, was also favorably disposed toward Slovene-language literacy: he supported the opening of Slovene schools in the Triestine suburbs and surroundings, along with the printing of Slovene textbooks. 3

The Rise of the National Language in the Post-March Period

In terms of politics, 1848 was not a watershed year that disrupted or changed the above-mentioned linguistic practices. The Italian Risorgimento produced a lukewarm response in the city, which is attested to by the fact that during the March Revolution the Triestines did not join the initiatives of Italian rebels in Venice and Veneto. On the contrary, they showed their loyalty to Vienna, which was in turn repaid by Francis Joseph who on 12 April 1850 declared Trieste an “independent city,” or a city with a special statute (reichsunmittelbare Stadt). The Trieste city council also was given the power of a provincial diet.30 On 26 September 1848, the temporary commission at the helm of the municipality of Trieste suggested introducing Italian as a medium of instruction in Triestine primary schools and in grammar school. Vienna did not comply with the request. The central authorities were convinced that a multinational city was more in need of a mixed German-Italian grammar school than an Italian one.31 Despite the insistence of municipal representatives, who claimed that

S. Cuore a Trieste”, in Dal litorale austriaco alla Venezia Giulia: miscellanea di studi giuliani, ed. Fulvio Salimbeni (Udine: Del Bianco, 1991), 195–8. 29  Ravnikar was one of the first harbingers of Slovene nationalism; he contributed to the formation of a Slovene language standard. See Jernej Kosi, Kako je nastal slovenski narod: Začetki slovenskega nacionalnega gibanja v prvi polovici 19. stoletja [On the origin of the Slovene nation: The beginnings of the Slovene national movement in the first half of the nineteenth century] (Ljubljana: Sophia, 2013), 127–202. 30  Giorgio Negrelli, Comune e Impero negli storici della Trieste asburgica (Trieste: Giuffrè, 1968), 168–9. 31  De Rosa, Libro di scorno, libro d’onore, 105. The state grammar school, for instance, was attended by 41 Slovenes, 146 Italians, 35 Germans, and 34 members of other nationalities in 1861. In the first and second grades, Slovene was taught twice a week, while in the third grade, once a week. Iz Tersta, Kmetijske in rokodelske novice [From Trieste, agricultural and handicraft news], 25 September 1861, 320.

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the city was populated by 50,000 Italians and merely 10,000 Slavs, Germans, Frenchmen, Greeks, and Englishmen, who spoke Italian as a “native language” anyway, a German-Italian grammar school was opened on 28 August 1848, in which Slovene was introduced as one of the subjects. The central authorities’ refusal did not provoke a strong reaction. Concurrently, the most influential Italian intellectual circle, which formed around the newspaper La Favilla (1836–1847), supported the idea of a multicultural and multilingual Trieste and Istria.32 Its Italian pre-Risorgimento feeling corresponded to the idea of a politically autonomous Trieste, a “Hansa city,” the Hamburg of the Adriatic.33 Meanwhile, the post-March period encouraged a handful of enthusiasts to establish Slavjanski34 zbor (The Slavic Assembly) on 23 October 1848 in the Tergesteo Palace, a stone’s throw from the Trieste commodity exchange, which four months later was renamed Slavjansko društvo (The Slavic Society). The society’s 336 full and 140 corresponding members included, alongside Slovenes, members of other Slavic ethnic groups present in Trieste, first and foremost Croats, but also Serbs, Czechs, and Poles, many of whom declared themselves Austrian patriots.35 The society aimed to enthuse a wide swathe of the population with the “Slavic awakening,” including those who had “betrayed their roots” and adapted to the language and culture of the city’s Italian majority. In the mid-nineteenth century the majority of the population who had moved to Trieste from the hinterland and the nearby interior

32  Apih, Trieste, 33. 33  Ibid., 37; Dominique Kirchner Reill, “A Poet’s Struggle for a New Adriaticism in the Nineteenth Century,” Austrian History Yearbook 42 (2011): 8–10. For more on the subject, see also Kirchner Reill, Nationalists Who Feared the Nation. 34  In the Slovene-language press published in Trieste up to the First World War, the adjective slavjansko was used not only as a synonym for Slovene, but also for Slavic. Similarly, it was used in the names of economic or professional societies, even in instances when their (founding) members were exclusively of Slovene origin. From 1848 onwards, the idea of a pan-Slavic and Yugoslav brotherhood enjoyed considerable support in the littoral, certainly much more so than in Carniola, Styria, and Carinthia. On the use of the terms “Slovenes” and “Slovene” in the early nineteenth century, see Kosi, Kako je nastal slovenski narod [On the origin of the Slovene nation], 244–57; Teodor Domej, “Dunaj in Koroška v Prešernovem življenju” [Vienna and Carinthia in Prešeren’s life], in Melikov zbornik: Slovenci v zgodovini in njihovi srednjeevropski sosedje [Melik’s miscellany: Slovenes throughout history and their Central European neighbors], ed. Vincenc Rajšp (Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, 2001), 405–30. 35  On how a propensity for Slovene national belonging did not imply an unambiguous definition in terms of nationality, see Vodopivec, Od Pohlinove slovnice do samostojne države, 137–8.

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(Carniola, Styria, and Carinthia) amalgamated with the Italian-speaking urban majority.36 Transitions to German-speaking ranks, which consisted mostly of state officials,37 were less frequent and made predominately by senior officials and individuals working in commerce. The belonging of individuals to a bi- or trilingual environment was in line with their provincial identities, which was also preserved after their arrival in this new environment. Within the Slavic Society, a shift in terms of a clearer expression of its adherents’ national belonging emerged between March and August 1849 upon the publication of its journal Slavjanski rodoljub [The Slavic patriot], which solidified its members’ awareness that the Slovene nation also had its foundations in the Slovene language. The journal, which published articles that were written exclusively in Slovene and Serbo-Croatian,38 defined the concept of national loyalty in its first issue. It highlighted the demand for the national equality of Slovenes in Trieste, which was to be achieved with the establishment of a Slovene primary school in the city center and with the introduction of Slovene into administration.39 Slovenes were supposed to “demand that from this point onwards any laws printed in German and Italian, any governor’s orders be published and explained in Slovene; officials be made to communicate in Slovene

36  Marco Breschi, Aleksej Kalc, and Elisabetta Navarra, “La nascita di una città. Storia minima della popolazione di Trieste, sec. XVIII–XIX”, in Storia economica e sociale di Trieste, vol. 1, 69–238; Marta Verginella, “Sloveni a Trieste. Da comunità etnica a minoranza nazionale”, in Storia economica e sociale di Trieste, vol. 1, 441–81; Marina Cattaruzza, “Italiani e Sloveni a Trieste: la formazione dell’identità nazionale”, in Trieste nell’Ottocento. Le transformazioni di una società civile, ed. Marina Cattaruzza (Udine: Del Bianco, 1995), 119–65, particularly 134. 37  Pierpaolo Dorsi, “La collettività di lingua tedesca”, in Storia economica e sociale di Trieste, vol. 1, 547–71, particularly 560. According to the 1869 census, 4.46 percent of the Triestine population spoke German; in 1875, they numbered 3.78 percent. In 1880, there were 5,141 speakers of German in Trieste (4.27 percent of the total population); in 1910, they numbered 11,856 (6.21 percent). See also Piero Purini, Metamorfosi etniche. I cambiamenti di popolazione a Trieste, Gorizia, Fiume e in Istria 1914–1975 (Udine: Kappa Vu, 2010), 34. 38  On Slovene-Croatian relations in Trieste, see Milan Pahor, Slavjanska sloga: Slovenci in Hrvati v Trstu: od avstroogrske monarhije do italijanske republike [Slavic unity: Slovenes and Croats in Trieste: From the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to the Italian Republic] (Trieste: ZTT EST, 2004). 39  Slavljanski rodoljub. Mesečni časopis na svitlobo dan od Slavjanskiga družtva v Terstu [The Slavic patriot. A monthly published by the Slavic Society in Trieste], Trieste, nos. 1–6, 1849.

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in mild and sweet voices, to correspond with you and draft any contracts or other documents that concern you in this language.”40 Only a portion of Slavic Society members agreed with the transition from engaging in cultural activities to the politicization of the linguistic question.41 The majority of members considered the demand for Slovene national rights incompatible with their Austrophilia.42 Many of them considered the society’s call for the use of Slovene in contacts with the authorities as too daring. To the majority, the idea of the unification of all Slovenes in a common administrative body, to which just some of the society’s members were warming, was particularly unacceptable.43 Not every segment of the Triestine elite thought in rigid national categories or understood language as an objective attribute of ethnicity, which is evident from a discussion concerning the language that would be taught at the local state grammar school in the Triestine municipal council in April 1851. The opinions on whether classes in the first years should be held exclusively in German or Italian differed. The majority believed that the primacy of German as a medium of instruction was necessary; the proposal for an entirely Italianspeaking secondary school was supported by a mere 17 councilors out of a total of 54. As pointed out by Giorgio Negrelli, the Triestine political class resisted Germanization in the 1850s. The revolt against Vienna was seen as a reaction against centralization rather than as an expression of national aspirations and demands.44 Such sentiment was based on “historical rights” and a privileged relation to the Habsburg dynasty. Ten years later, when the question of the grammar school was reopened in Trieste, Italian political representatives had a different opinion and a uniform view. They aimed to prove Trieste’s eminent 40  Ibid., 18, 27 March 1849. Similar discrepancies occurred also in Lower Styria. See Cvirn, Trdnjavski trikotnik: Politična orientacija Nemcev na Spodnjem Štajerskem, 54, and also 28–9. 41  For instance: the poet and senior tax officer Jovan Vesel Koseski, who was head of the society, did not agree with the politicization of the linguistic question. 42  Advocacy for one’s own nationality did not imply an anti-imperial stance. See Judson, Guardians of the Nation, 9. 43  The program of Zedinjena Slovenija [United Slovenia], which was formulated by Matija Majer in March 1848, argued for the reorganization of the Habsburg Monarchy into a federation of free and equal nations and for the unification of Slovene territory on the basis of language. Vodopivec, Od Pohlinove slovnice do samostojne države, 62; Vasilij Melik, Slovenci, 1848–1918: razprave in članki [Slovenes, 1848–1918: Treatises and articles] (Maribor: Litera, 2002), 39–40, 58–62. 44  Negrelli, Comune e Impero negli storici della Trieste asburgica, 123–4, 181–9. At the time, proponents of the pro-Italian movement were not yet present among the local authorities (ibid., 182).

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Italian character and establish the linguistic primacy of Italian in schools. Italian-language schools, and particularly the grammar school, had to become the sanctuary of the Italian nationality and a “home to Triestine spirituality.”45 To political representatives, who presented themselves by way of a more and more nationally profiled political program, the original cosmopolitanism of Triestine society became obtrusive. So did the idea of an Italian-Slovene brotherhood, which had been promoted by La Favilla several years earlier. Pacifico Valussi, its former editor, who swore on Giulia’s special character in 1848,46 became an advocate for its exclusive affiliation with Italy. On this occasion, he referred to the “national law47 and to geographical, military, and even economic factors.”48 Similar reasons led to the abandonment of the idea of Trieste becoming the port of the “future Slavia,” which also enthused the circles gathered around La Favilla in the revolutionary March days.49 By proclaiming Trieste an exclusively Italian city, the leaders of the Italian national party demanded that everyone living in the city adopt an Italian national identity.50 The reorientation51 of the majority of Trieste’s leading elite, who viewed themselves as firmly in the Italian nation and concurrently proclaimed their Slovene neighbors to be rural plebs, a people without history or culture and unable to raise themselves to the level of a nation, was not a rapid one. It occurred in stages, which is characteristic of nationalization processes elsewhere in the Habsburg Monarchy and Europe.52 With the birth of the Italian kingdom in 1861 and the 1866 shift of the Italian-Austrian border eastwards, the Italian Risorgimento certainly contributed to the expansion of Italian national feelings east of the Italian-Austrian border. It contributed to the belief that the

45  Anna Millo, Storia di una borghesia. La famiglia Vivante a Trieste dall’emporio alla guerra mondiale (Gorizia: Libreria editrice goriziana, 1998), 146. In spite of the city authorities’ pro-Italian attitude and their efforts to establish an Italian grammar school, important segments of the Triestine bourgeoisie supported multilingualism, which was ensured by a German-language grammar school. 46  In 1863, Graziadio Ascoli came up with the term Venezia Giulia, which he used to refer to the territory of the Austrian Littoral that was also populated by Italians. 47  In the sense of the natural law of nations. 48  [Pacifico Valussi], Trieste et l’Istrie, leurs droits dans la question italienne (Paris: 1861); Angelo Vivante, Irredentismo adriatico (Florence: 1912), 70. 49  Negrelli, Trieste, 134. 50  Ibid., 131. 51  Vivante, Irredentismo adriatico, 67. 52  Miroslav Hroch, “From National Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation: The NationBuilding Process in Europe,” in Mapping the Nation, ed. Gopal Balakrishnan (London: Verso, 1996), 78–97.

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territory of the Austrian Littoral, which was populated by Italians, ought to be a part of the Kingdom of Italy. However, in the 1860s, this view was not shared by many in the Triestine and Gorizian political scene. It was typical of educated individuals and parts of the middle class, but not even remotely of the broader populace and especially of the lower-class population that remained insusceptible to notions of national identification until the beginning of the twentieth century.53 On the Littoral, an important shift towards imagining the national community and expanding national awareness in the middle class occurred, similarly as in other parts of the monarchy, only after the Basic Law of State on the General Rights of Nationals was passed on 21 December 1867.54 In Trieste and Gorizia, the possibility that the minority Slovene language would become equal to Italian or German in administration or the school system turned out to be a lever for national agitation and the organization of the Italian Liberal National Party. The main goal of the party, which acquired a majority in both city councils only in the 1880s, was to hinder the opening of Slovene-language schools and the development of the Slovene population’s literacy in its native language and, in doing so, to stimulate the “possibility of its assimilation.”55 As stated by Angelo Ara and Claudio Magris, the protection of Italian primacy in the urban center became the raison d’être of Italian Trieste.56 Up to the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy, an anti-Slovene and a broader antiSlavic policy would serve as a defense strategy for Trieste’s Italian identity, and 53  Judson, “Introduction: Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe,” 6. 54  In July 1868, the conflicts between Slovene and Italian patriots resulted in two casualties, which Angelo Vivante describes as the end of the traditional relationship between both national communities (Vivante, Irredentismo adriatico, 101). On political organizing related to the linguistic question in the Habsburg Monarchy, see Judson, The Habsburg Empire, 293–9. 55  On the yearslong efforts of Slovene political representatives in Gorizia to obtain a public, Slovene-language primary school in the city, see Pahor, “Pregled razvoja osnovnega šolstva na zahodnem robu slovenskega ozemlja,” 266; Andrej Gabršček, Goriški Slovenci: narodne, kulturne, politične in gospodarske črtice [Gorizian Slovenes: National, cultural, political and economic sketches] (Ljubljana: Gabršček, 1932), 316, 328; Peter Stres, Dr. Anton Gregorčič: 1852–1925: politična biografija [Dr. Anton Gregorčič: 1852–1925: A political biography] (Gorizia: Zadruga Goriška Mohorjeva, 2013), 111–15. Slovenes in Gorizia established the first public, Slovene-language grammar school in 1913; see Branko Marušič, “Andrej Ipavec (1880–1924): ob stoletnici prve popolne slovenske državne gimnazije” [Andrej Ipavec (1880–1924): On the occasion of the first centenary of the first full Slovene staterun grammar school], Izvestje Raziskovalne postaje ZRC SAZU v Novi Gorici 9 [The annual report of the research center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Nova Gorica 9] (2012): 17–29. 56  Angelo Ara and Claudio Magris, Trieste. Un’identità di frontiera (Turin: Einaudi, 1982), 26.

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also functioned as a means of attaining a consensus among the strata that did not subscribe to the interests of the Italian Liberal National Party.57 On the other hand, the denial of Slovenes’ national and linguistic rights in Trieste by the city authorities encouraged the organization of the Slovene national camp, which voiced its political demands initially through individual elected representatives and from 1874 onwards through the political society Edinost [Unity]. Resistance to the policy of Italian-language primacy became a measure of Slovene success in the Triestine public and in forming a nationally aware Slovene community. With the growing national organization and awareness of the city’s Slovene population, it became increasingly unacceptable for the use of Slovene to be restricted to Triestine churches or the state grammar school, and to be absent from municipal offices or schools. Up to the outbreak of the First World War, Slovene political representatives engaged in a political struggle for the recognition of Slovene linguistic rights, so “that our language be given the right in schools, offices, and public institutions that is granted by constitutional provisions and nature.”58 If we analyze the individual peaks of conflicts that occurred between city councilors regarding the linguistic question and aspirations for opening Slovene schools in the city center, we can see that the latter was radicalized particularly after May 1883, when parents of 250 Slovene-speaking primary school children along with the parents of 178 state grammar school students signed a petition for the opening of Slovene schools in the center of Trieste.59 The city council rejected the petition on 15 December 1884 by referring to the fact that Slovene primary schools were accessible in the surrounding areas (according to municipal calculations they were located within 4 km) and that the Slovene population did not need obligatory

57  The monopoly of the National Liberal Party over the Italian population and the monopoly exercised by the political society Edinost over the Slovene population was not disrupted by the establishment of the Social Democratic Union in 1894. It was only in the decade prior to the First World War when the Triestine proletariat organized in social democratic ranks that it started to opt for internationalism and Austro-Marxism. Marina Cattaruzza, Socialismo Adriatico. La socialdemocrazia di lingua italiana nei territori cos­ tieri della Monarchia asburgica; 1888–1915 (Manduria: Piero Lacaita, 1998), 155–82; Sabine Rutar, Kultur, Nation, Milieu: Sozialdemokratie in Triest vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Essen: Klartext, 2004). 58  “Slovenstvo v Trstu” [Slovenes in Trieste], Edinost [Unity], 16 September 1866. 59  According to the official census of 1880, 26,035 Slovenes lived in the surroundings of Trieste and 2,817 in the city center; see Marina Cattaruzza, Trieste nell’Ottocento. Le transformazioni di una società civile (Udine: Del Bianco, 1995), 120.

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schooling in the Slovene language.60 In general, education represented the central point of nationalist activism in the monarchy, and it was exactly in 1884 when the supreme court ruled that a community must provide classes in a certain language if it was spoken by 40 or more school-age children within a two-hour walking distance.61 In subsequent discussions, which followed up to the outbreak of the First World War, Italian councilors referred to the fact that Slovene demands were a reflection of a people whose “language, culture, and history were still in their infancy.”62 This attitude of the Italian representatives was based on the defense of the Italian “civil nation,” which was backed by its thousand-year-old culture and history, and which boasted of its Roman roots.63 References to the idea of the autochthony of the Italian national community implied that the Slovene element was a foreign body in the city.64 It can be gathered from city council’s minutes and especially from the contemporary Slovene press that Slovene political representatives used a similar rhetorical and conceptual repertory,65 particularly when the Slovene-speaking surroundings were defended from the opening of Italian schools. Gustav Gregorin, a Slovene lawyer and city councilor, was prepared to support the opening of an Italian school in the district of San Giovanni (Sveti Ivan) only if city authorities allowed a Slovene school in the city:66 “Until a Slovene school is allowed in the

60  De Rosa, Libro di scorno, libro d’onore, 198–9. “Interpelacija” [Interpellation], Edinost, 5 May 1888. 61  Judson, The Habsburg Empire, 310. 62  Verbali del consiglio della città di Trieste, Resoconto stenografico della XVII seduta pubblica del 14 luglio 1897, no. 17, 83. 63  Verbali del consiglio della città di Trieste, Resoconto stenografico della XVI seduta pubblica e resoconto della XI seduta segreta del 14 settembre 1892, no. 20, 230–4. 64  On the importance of historiography in nation-building in a multiethnic environment see Tibor Frank and Frank Hadler, eds., Disputed Territories and Shared Pasts: Overlapping National Histories in Modern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 65  On the similarity of national repertories, see Alberto M. Banti, Sublime madre nostra. La nazione italiana dal Risorgimento al fascismo (Bari; Rome: Laterza, 2011), VI. To free themselves from reproaches concerning ahistoricism that were brought up by their opponents, Slovene patriots referred to their autochthony and centuries-long presence in the city center: “Slovani v Trstu nekdaj in denes, III” [The Slavs in Trieste in the past and in the present, III], Edinost, 4 February 1888; “Slovani v Trstu nekdaj in denes, IV” [The Slavs in Trieste in the past and in the present, IV] Edinost, 15 February 1888. 66  On the need to establish Italian schools in the areas with Slovene- and Croatian-speaking populations, particularly in the Istrian countryside, see Diana De Rosa, Gocce di inchiostro: gli asili, scuole, ricreatori doposcuola della Lega nazionale: sezione adriatica (Udine: Del Bianco, 2000), 10–16, 55–6.

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city, we shall not be so mad as to adjust to the establishment of a local Italian school, whose political intention is denationalization. We cannot be expected to commit suicide.”67 However, as stated by an Italian Liberal National Party representative in the city council, the municipality of Trieste was not quite up to “the anti-Italian agitation which grew year by year in our territory either with the establishment of new propaganda centers or with the expansion of activity centers in form of support societies, choirs, reading societies, etc.”68 With the establishment of Slovene-language private schools and kindergartens in the city, which from 1887 onwards ensured the literacy of Slovene children in Trieste,69 and with the wide-ranging activities of cultural and support societies, economic cooperatives, and loan banks, the circle of city dwellers who identified themselves as members of the Slovene nation began to grow. The extent of the increase of capital in Slovene and Croatian banks instilled fear of a Slavic financial siege in the Italian irredentist environment. In Trieste, Slovenes were organized as a society within a society, with an autonomous public sphere, press, theatre, cultural circles, and so on, which managed to curb the assimilation (into strictly Italian-speaking society) of people who moved to the city from the broader Slovene-speaking hinterland. According to data obtained from the Trieste (civil) registry office, in 1910 the city and its surroundings were populated by a total of 226,417 people, of whom 36,208 chose Slovene as their Umgangssprache, i.e., language of everyday use.70 Following a revision of the census, which the administration was coerced into by Slovene political representatives, the number of Slovene speakers increased to 56,916, whereas the Italian-speaking population totaled 148,398; Serbo-Croatian was spoken by 2,403; and German by 11,856 persons. Despite the officially confirmed increase in the Slovene-speaking population in Trieste, Slovene national representatives failed to overturn policies concerning the use of Slovene in city public schools and in municipal offices. In the city center, the 67  Verbali del consiglio della città di Trieste, XLIII, 1903, Part II, Trieste, Caprin, 1904, 107. 68  Resoconto stenografico della XXII seduta pubblica e resoconto della XVI seduta segreta del 24 November 1892, no. 26, 290. The conduct of several teachers in Slovene-language schools, who posed a threat to “our [Italian] nationality” and incited “fanaticism on the part of the countryside towards the city” was discussed in the same session (Resoconto stenografico della XXII seduta pubblica, 290). 69  From 1887 onwards, private schools and kindergartens were established by the Ss. Cyril and Methodius Society. 70  According to other calculations, the population totaled 229,510 (Purini, Metamorfosi etniche, 16).

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primacy of the Italian Liberal National Party defined the political agenda and thus the linguistic rights of the Slovene minority.71 4

Slovene in Testamentary Practice in the City and the Countryside

In his memoirs, the Slovenian lawyer and politician Henrik Tuma72 provides a detailed description of the conditions in Trieste in the period of his arrival at the city court. In 1887, he became a judicial trainee in the criminal court department. I was immediately given a confidential position in the department run by Conte Dandini, a trusted confidant of the Austrian government. At the time, trials against Italian irredentists were abundant. A somewhat more favorable wind for Slavs in the Littoral began to blow in Vienna. Pražak, a Czech, was the minister of justice, while Privy Councilor Baron Defacis, a Slovene from Kanal,73 was the president of the higher court in Trieste, then Mozetig, also a Slovene from the Goriška region, was the president of the provincial court, and the renowned national worker Matej Trnovec was head of the local court, the so-called pretura.74 According to his findings, not a single trainee or judge with a command of Slovene was working in any of six district court departments.75 A memorandum about Slovene in schools and public offices, particularly in the Austrian 71  On 5 May 1914, Josip Vilfan addressed the municipal council in Slovene, sparking a strong protest from Italian-speaking councilors. “Vihar v tržaškem občinskem svetu” [A storm in the Triestine municipal council], Edinost, 6 May 1914. 72  Tuma was born in Ljubljana in 1858 and studied law in Vienna. After his judicial training in Trieste and his brief experience as a judge in Tolmin, he practiced law in Gorizia. Between 1895 and 1905 he was a member of the Gorizian provincial parliament. In 1899, he co-founded the National Progressive Party. In 1908, he joined the Yugoslav Social Democratic Party and became one of its most prominent members in the Littoral. 73  Kanal is a town in the Soča (Isonzo) valley. 74  Henrik Tuma, Iz mojega življenja. Spomini, misli, izpovedi [From my life. Memories, thoughts, confessions] (Ljubljana: Tuma, 1997), 167. 75  Tuma, Iz mojega življenja, 172. The situation in Gorizia was similar. In the Sežana court district (a part of the crownland of Gorizia and Gradisca), where the population consisted almost exclusively of Slovene speakers, the language of administration was, as a rule, German and occasionally Italian. The fact that in May 1881 the Sežana district administration advertised the open post of a recorder and stated, for the first time, knowledge of Slovene as one of the eligibility criteria is significant.

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Littoral, which the society Edinost addressed to the government on 15 January 1881, proved ineffectual. The demand to appoint judges and court officials with a command of Slovene and Croatian suffered a similar fate even after the introduction of dual juries in the provincial courts in Gorizia, Rovinj, and Trieste, which aimed to put an end to the problems that Slovene and Croatian parties experienced with translators.76 Tuma, who wanted to begin practicing law as soon as possible, was convinced by the president of the Higher Court, Karl Defacis, to remain at the court where, following a year-long practice, he took up the post of a senior probate judge: “When I was given the probate department, I taught people with great zeal … Since I issued certificates of inheritance in Slovene, I also entered them formally in the same language. In doing so, I produced a series of Slovene entries. Shortly afterwards, the irredentist press raised a storm stating that I had made Slovene entries into the venerable Italian land register.”77 Meanwhile, Otokar Rybář,78 who along with councilor Ivan Trnovec79 and adjunct Fraus80 used Slovene in juridical acts, was appointed as a trainee in the court in Trieste. The Italian press named them the quartetto sciavo,81 and court officials referred to them as consesso sciavo.82 As Tuma explained, “At the time, 76  E dinost, 2 February 1881. The preserved juridical acts from the court in Trieste indicate that in judicial proceedings up to 1918 (e.g., interrogations of witnesses and suspects) mostly Italian was used; German was used to a lesser extent and Slovene only exceptionally (see AST, Tribunale Provinciale). 77  Tuma, Iz mojega življenja, 173. 78  Otokar Rybář (1865–1927) was a trainee in the provincial court between 1888 and 1890. He subsequently worked as a clerk with Ante Dukić, a lawyer in Pazin. He opened his own practice in Trieste in 1895 and thus became the city’s third Slovene lawyer. In 1907, he was elected as a member of the state parliament in the city’s fifth electoral district. Between 1900 and 1914 he was active in the city council. As a member of the parliament in Vienna, he successfully advocated for a recount in the census for Gorizia and Trieste with regard to the language of communication. It was thanks to him that the ministry of education started to appoint Slovene teachers in German-language state schools in Trieste. Alfonz Gspan, ed., Slovenski biografski leksikon, vol. 3, Raab—Švikaršič [Slovene biographical lexicon, vol. 3, Raab—Svikaršič] (Ljubljana: Slov. Akad. Znanosti i Umetnosti, 1960–1971), 178–9. 79  Tuma mentioned Trnovec as a well-known patriot (Tuma, Iz mojega življenja, 167). 80  Tuma refers to him as a Jew who learned Slovene in the course of his work: “Initially, he spent a year working as an adjunct in Komen, in the Karst region, where he learned perfect Slovene. He wrote it better than many a then-Slovene jurist. We got on splendidly and shared our workload.” (Tuma, Iz mojega življenja, 173). 81  S’cavo (from Italian sclave) is a dialect pejorative or derogative term for a Slovene or a Croat. 82  Consesso is Italian for a meeting place of important figures, or an assembly. Tuma, Iz mojega življenja, 175.

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people from the surrounding villages were used to the fact that we accepted their defenses but also rejoinders and final replies on record. This was unheard of in the practice of the time; it was even more outrageous that everything was written in Slovene.”83 A gradual change in the court in favor of Slovene, which is the subject of Tuma’s writing, is attested to by individual reports in the newspaper Edinost in the 1880s.84 However, a survey of testaments and other provincial probate records from the same period, which are kept in the state archives in Trieste, paints a somewhat different picture.85 The consideration of Slovene in judicial practice did not imply an immediate transfer of influence into the broader practice of notarial writings and other acts. True, individuals, particularly those living in the surroundings of Trieste and in the Karst region, started to turn to lawyers and notaries who practiced in Slovene in the area of the Sežana (Sesana) district administration and the Koper court district in the late 1880s and early 1890s. The opportunity to use Slovene in notarial records proved more attractive than geographical proximity, as Slovene speakers turned to, for instance, Karl Čibelj, a notary with an office in Komen; Rudolf Stark, who practiced in Koper; or Anton Ballaben and Joahim Zenchovich, who worked in Sežana, instead of looking up one of the notaries in Trieste who worked solely in Italian or German.86 This probably prompted Ivan Pipan, a shoemaker from the Triestine suburb of Rojan, to seek a lawyer in Sežana. He knew that he would be able to express his last will in Slovene there; if he had gone to the nearby notary’s office in Trieste, he would have been forced to express his final wishes in Italian.87 An analysis of last wills of merchants and businessmen who were actively involved in and publicly supported the city’s Slovene national camp shows that their probate documents, which are kept in the Commercial and Maritime Court in Trieste, were as a rule written in Italian, at times in German, and only exceptionally in Slovene.88 Owing to his testament, which he himself had written in Slovene by hand, merchant and banker Janez Kalister,89 a native 83  Ibid., 175. 84  “Italijanščina, uradni jezik pri c. kr. dež. sodišču tržaškem?” [Italian, the official language at the Triestine imperial and royal provincial court?], Edinost, 22 September 1894. 85   A ST, Archivio notarile, 1888–1893, Testamenti, 26. 86   A ST, Archivio notarile, 1888–1893, Testamenti, 26–8. 87   A ST, Pipan Giovanni, Archivio notarile, 1888–1893, Testamenti, 26, no. 5006. 88  See, for instance, a memorandum in Slovene addressed to the Imperial and Royal Commerce and Maritime Court relating to probate acts of the merchant Giovanni (Ivan) Comel (AST, Tribunale commerciale marittimo, IV, 12 1894, folder 1207). 89   A ST, Testament per pravi pameti [Testament of a sound mind], 16 August 1857, Tribunale commerciale marittimo, folder 1211.

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of Slavina who became one of the wealthiest Triestines after moving to the city, turned out to be an exception. However, the second, extended version of his last will, which he expressed before a notary, is composed in German.90 Similarly, Anton Dejak, a merchant and supporter of Slovene societies, also left his last will in German.91 The testament of Andrej Daneu, a Slovene representative in the city council, landowner, and owner of the Obelisk hotel in Opicina (Opčine) is however written in Italian.92 The opening of Slovene-language law firms in the 1890s and their heightened activities at the turn of the new century increased the options for using Slovene to express and write testaments, contracts of conveyance, marriage, and other contracts in Trieste. Nonetheless, an overview of the documents kept in the State Archives in Trieste up through the present day indicates that the Slovene-speaking population of the city and its surroundings did not have their testamentary or any other probate documents written in Slovene to the expected extent. An entirely different picture is painted if the analysis of the institutionalized use of Slovene also includes the area located southeast of Trieste, i.e., Breg, which included the municipality of Dolina and was a part of the Koper court district. The area was rural and had close economic ties with Trieste, despite its initial administrative and ecclesiastical association with Carniola in the nineteenth century and, later on, with Istria. The systematic development of the rural population’s literacy, which was encouraged by the local Slovene clergy up to the mid-nineteenth century and subsequently by the local municipal authorities and lay teachers, paved the way not only for an accelerated process of nationalization, but also for the secularization of the considered rural population. The consequences thereof are noticeable in the local testamentary practices and in the choice of language in which testaments were written. In the first half of the seventeenth century, priests in Breg, who were often natives of Carniola or Istria, recorded testaments in Latin. In the eighteenth 90   A ST, Tribunale, commerciale marittimo, Testament, IV/ 12/ 1864, folder 1211. For more on Kalister and the Slovene business elite, see Marta Verginella, “Družbeni vzpon slovenske elite” [The Slovene elite’s social ascent], in Od Maribora do Trsta. 1850–1914. Zbornik referatov [From Maribor to Trieste. 1850–1914. A collection of papers], ed. Darko Friš and Franc Rozman (Maribor: Pedagoška fakulteta, 1998), 69–76; Verginella, “Sloveni a Trieste,” 462–6. 91   A ST, Tribunale Commerciale marittimo, Testament, 14 June 1886, folder 1212. 92   A ST, Tribunale Commerciale marittimo, Testamento, IV/7/ 1885, folder 1212. Along with the testament, the probate inventory also included a trilingual form (with the headings Rapporto di Sigillazione, Todfalls Aufnahm, Zapis za mrličem [Record of death]), which was filled out only in Italian (AST, Tribunale Commerciale marittimo, R. Pretura Urbana Civile, IV/7/1885, folder 1201).

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century, Italian was the language in which testamentary acts were written. In the period of the Fünfenberg court (1814–1832),93 testaments were written mostly in German. After 1833, when the area of Breg was included in the Koper court district, testaments were written predominately in Italian, and only a small share of testators left their testaments in German. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Slovene is found in German and Italian versions of testaments mostly as an auxiliary language and was used to define objects and movables that would not have been identifiable in foreign-language terminology. Some testaments from Breg of the 1830s and 1840s mention that the Italian or German versions were recorded only after they had been read in Slovene to those present by the clerk. Several testaments mention that the testator’s last will was expressed in Carniolan, lingua cragnolina, which indicates that in Breg, Slovene was referred to by a term similar to that of nearby Trieste.94 Even though the first Slovene-language testament from Breg, which is kept in the Regional Archives of Koper, is dated to 17 June 1833,95 Slovene only started to be used in the Koper court district as a full official language of notarial acts from the 1840s onwards. If we trace the choice of language made by thirtyone testators in Dolina, the center of the municipality and deanery, and, of course, the linguistic preference of the person who recorded the testaments, we see that 29 percent of testaments were edited in German and 71 percent in Italian in the period 1833 to 1844. In the decade 1845–54, nine testaments were written in Italian, seven in German, and five in Slovene out of a total of twenty-three. In the second half of the nineteenth century, last wills and testaments were not merely expressed in Slovene, but were also written in it. The number of Slovene-language testaments increased considerably and outnumbered Italian-language testaments in the last three decades of the nineteenth century.96 In this environment, where all official documents were issued and written in Slovene, the 1901 testament of Luigia Tomsich, which was written in Italian, turned out to be a rare exception.97 93  Located in the proximity of the village of Zabrežec, from 1814 to 1832 Fünfenberg Castle housed the seat of the district court and that of the district’s administrative unit, which was part of Carniola. 94  The document was signed by witnesses after the testamentary declaration had been read in German and translated into “Carniolan” (PAK, Oporoke, Bartolomeus Vodopiuc, 20 October 1842, folder 1836–1849). 95   PAK, Oporoke, Mateuž Kozina, 17 June 1833, folder 1818–1835. The Slovene-language text was attached to the Italian translation, which was officially registered in the Koper court. 96  In the period 1855–1864, 55.9 percent of testaments were written in Slovene; between 1865 and 1874 90.3%; 1875–1884, 93.6%; 1885–1894, 93.6%; and 1895–1904, 100%. 97   PAK, Oporoke, Luigia Tomsich, 20 April 1901, folder 1900–1904.

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The initiators of changes regarding the language of administration and official written acts in Breg originated from the ranks of national activists. A letter to the editorial office of the periodical Ilirski primorjan [The Man of Illyrian Littoral] by a certain J. L.98 highlights the dean’s role in the promotion of the use of Slovene in official matters in the area of Breg. The author of the letter states that “the situation regarding Slovene is still pitiful. In offices [in Koper] they still write only in Italian, at best a summons is written in Slovene every now and then. We recommend that our mayors or podestà finally start using Slovene in administration.”99 The efforts of priests and individual members of the rural upper stratum in exercising Slovenes’ linguistic rights in Breg and elsewhere in Trieste’s surroundings did not bring about immediate results. This is confirmed by the fact that several important local figures in Breg, including the delegate to the court and mayor Eduard Lampe from Boljunec, wrote their testaments in Italian even in the 1870s. It was only at the testator’s explicit request that they agreed to write them in Slovene. To Lampe, who was familiar with Slovene testamentary terminology to the same extent as the Italian, the latter was the language of official documents. The conditions in Breg became more favorable for Slovene in the 1880s, when the majority of village recorders began to write testamentary acts predominately in Slovene. From the 1890s onwards, final wills were written in Italian only exceptionally. 5 Conclusion Even though both Italian and Slovene nationalists attempted to “infuse all spheres of social life with their particular patriotic, nationalist, and political meanings,”100 and the linguistic question became part and parcel of nationalist ideologies, an analysis of linguistic practices points to important differences in the use of the minority and majority national language in the multiethnic environment of the Austrian Littoral. In the littoral’s main urban centers, Slovene did not become an equal language to the language favored by the majority, unlike the case, for instance, of the Czech language in Bohemia and 98  The initials probably stand for Janez Lovriha, a landowner from Dolina who subscribed to the periodicals Novice [News] and Slovenski pravnik [Slovene jurist], as well as other Slovene-language publications. 99  J[anez]. L[ovriha]., “Iz Doline pri Trstu,” Ilirski primorjan, 22 July 1866. 100  Judson, “Introduction: Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe,” 8.

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Moravia, which achieved parity with German in social, cultural, and political life.101 The rise of nationalism did not do away with multilingualism; however, the latter enjoyed continually diminishing political support. Due to national organizing and the conflicts between competing nationalisms, the practice of learning a neighbor’s language became less and less supported by educational institutions. As indicated by the examples of urban and rural centers that were the subject of our analysis, the Austrian Municipal Order, which enabled a rejection or restriction of minorities’ linguistic demands, played a crucial role in such linguistic homogenization.102 That is to say, on the municipal level, local authorities could reach decisions regarding minorities’ linguistic rights and discriminate against their national rival’s language. By violating and ignoring minority linguistic rights, they acted in support of the increasingly monolingual environment.103 The attitude of urban and rural authorities did not differ greatly in terms of the official use of the language. Both in Sežana and in Dolina, municipal authorities from the 1880s onwards acted similarly to the Liberal National Party in Trieste. Their goal was to enforce the use of the language of the majority in official practices and acts. Although the greater linguistic and national homogeneity represented a significant difference between the countryside and the city, the local authorities’ ultimate goal was the same. In both environments, national activists strived to enforce the use of a national language that reflected the numerically dominant national community. However, the choice of the language in which individual testaments were written indicates that the pressure exerted by dominant national elites reached the intersection of the public and private spheres, where the battle for the dominance of the “official” language took place.104 An in-depth examination of the reasons that prompted representatives of the political elite to use the official language non-coherently, also when this was not in line with their national creed, would certainly bring about a confrontation with ambiguous national stances and diverse forms of self-identification.105 These can be most

101  Kamusella, The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe, 912–13. 102  Jeremy King, “The Municipal and the National in the Bohemian Lands, 1848–1914,” Austrian History Yearbook 43 (2011): 103. 103  King, “The Municipal and the National in the Bohemian Lands,” 102–5. 104  Evans, “Language and State Building,” 20. 105  The question of how national beliefs “coexisted with other traditional forms of selfidentification” undoubtedly remains a key one (Judson, “Introduction: Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe,” 1).

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effectively detected and analyzed by means of autobiographical sources.106 It is only when we regard historical actors as humans of flesh and blood that the fluidity of their identities and the fragility of the national historiographical paradigm becomes evident.

106  In a previous study I engaged in an in-depth examination of the linguistic choice and the self-image of Bruno Trampuž, a Triestine Slovene in the period of fascism and the Second World War. On the basis of his two diaries (one from the period of his internment, the other from the war) and his correspondence, I analyzed his response and adjustment to national, political, and institutional changes that were brought about by the “great” shifts in history. See Marta Verginella, La guerra di Bruno. L’identità di confine di un antieroe triestino e sloveno (Rome: Donzelli, 2015).

Chapter 4

The Evolution of Linguistic Policies and Practices of the Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces in the Era of Ethnic Nationalisms: The Case of Ljubljana-Laibach Rok Stergar As nationalisms evolved during the nineteenth century, the understanding of languages changed dramatically. What used to be primarily a tool for communication and—in certain cases—a social marker was transformed into a political symbol, “an instrument of the ‘cult of nation,’” as Peter Burke put it.1 This process of the politicization of language had a great impact on the linguistically diverse Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary. One of the most visible changes in language use and the linguistic landscape was in regard to public inscriptions and signs in many towns in the lands with a non-Germanspeaking majority. The earlier domination of German in urban settings, especially in public, had become unacceptable as non-German nationalists moved to nationalize cities and towns. Thus, they strived to achieve one of their principal goals: a national space that would include all their compatriots but nobody else.2 As such a result was hardly possible in reality, the process was fraught with conflict. Not only German-speaking minorities, but also the Austrian state was for the most part not willing to give up German completely, the language that they generally considered to be superior. In this chapter, I will try to deepen our understanding of these developments by establishing how, if at all, the activities of Slovene nationalists in the capital of Carniola, Ljubljana-Laibach, were reflected in the changes of military rules and regulations as well as common practices. I hope to provide an answer to this question by analyzing *  I would like to thank the participants of the 2014 conference “Urban Space and Multilingualism in the Late Habsburg Empire” held at the University of Vienna for their helpful comments. I would also like to acknowledge the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding No. P6-0235). 1  Peter Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 160. For a comprehensive modern overview of those transformations in Central Europe, see Tomasz Kamusella, The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 2  Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 1–3.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004407978_005

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autobiographical sources, contemporary newspapers, statistics, and military documents from the archives and contextualizing them with the help of existing research. Fortunately, the changes nationalisms brought to urban settings have already been described and analyzed in several books on multilingual towns in the age of nationalism. They differ in their ambition and research outlook but all of them bring a wealth of insight.3 There is also some valuable research on Austrian garrison towns, although as Nicola Fontana quite rightly remarked, the literature on their counterparts in Germany is much more extensive and methodologically diverse.4 But let me begin with a description of 3  Eleonóra Babejová, Fin-de-Siècle Pressburg: Conflict & Cultural Coexistence in Bratislava 1897–1914 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2003); Robert Nemes, The Once and Future Budapest (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005); Markian Prokopovych, Habsburg Lemberg: Architecture, Public Space, and Politics in the Galician Capital, 1772– 1914 (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2008); Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914, 2nd rev. ed. (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2006); Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Janez Cvirn, Das “Festungsdreieck”: zur politischen Orientierung der Deutschen in der Untersteiermark (1861–1914), ed. Ernst Bruckmüller et al., trans. Irena Vilfan-Bruckmüller (Vienna: LIT, 2016); Dragan Matić, Nemci v Ljubljani: 1861–1918 [The Germans of Ljubljana: 1861–1918] (Ljubljana: Historia, 2002); Karin Almasy, Wie aus Marburgern “Slowenen” und “Deutsche” wurden: ein Beispiel zur beginnenden nationalen Differenzierung in Zentraleuropa zwischen 1848 und 1861 (Bad Radkersburg; Graz: Pavelhaus, 2014). 4  Frank Wiggermann, K.u.K. Kriegsmarine und Politik: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der italienischen Nationalbewegung in Istrien (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, 2004); Rok Stergar, “Vojski prijazen in zaželen garnizon”: Ljubljanski častniki med prelomom stoletja in prvo svetovno vojno [“A military-friendly and desired garrison town”: The officers of Ljubljana from the turn of the century to the First World War] (Ljubljana: Zveza zgodovinskih društev Slovenije, 1999); Wilhelm Steinböck, ed., Graz als Garnison: Beiträge zur Militärgeschichte der steirischen Landeshauptstadt (Vienna: Leykam, 1982); Martin Parth, “Die Garnison Graz um 1900,” Historisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Graz 27/28 (1998): 165–89; Nicola Fontana, “Trient als Festungs- und Garnisonsstadt: Militär und zivile Bevölkerung in einer k. u. k. Festungsstadt 1880–1914,” in Glanz—Gewalt—Gehorsam: Militär und Gesellschaft in der Habsburgermonarchie (1800 bis 1918), ed. Laurence Cole, Christa Hämmerle, and Martin Scheutz (Essen: Klartext, 2010), 177–98; Peter Melichar, “Ästhetik und Disziplin: Das Militär in Wiener Neustadt 1740–1914,” in Die Wienerische Neustadt: Handwerk, Handel und Militär, ed. Sylvia Hahn and Karl Flanner (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau, 1994), 283– 336; Piotr Galik, “Miasta Galicyskie jako garnizony armii austro-węgierskiej w prezededniu I wojny światowej” [The Galician towns as garrisons of the Austro-Hungarian army on the eve of the First World War], Acta Uniwersitatis Wratislaviensis 111 (1993): 113–23; John Fahey, “Undermining a Bulwark of the Monarchy: Civil-Military Relations in Fortress Przemyśl (1871–1914),” Austrian History Yearbook 48 (2017): 145–58; Elisabeth Berger and Laurence Cole, eds., Garnisonsstädte in der Habsburgermonarchie: Militär und Zivilgesellschaft im langen 19. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Schöningh, forthcoming). For literature on Germany, see Fontana, “Trient als Festungs- und Garnisonsstadt,” 177–9.

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starting points: the use of languages in Ljubljana-Laibach and the viewpoints of both the army and the townspeople concerning them. Ever since the Counts of Spanheim established an urban settlement on the banks of the Ljubljanica sometime in the thirteenth century, the inhabitants of the town used several vernaculars in their oral and written communication.5 According to the seventeenth-century polymath Johann Weichard Valvasor, almost a dozen different vernaculars could be heard in the town in his time. Of course, most of them were used only in private, in the homes of foreigners who represented about a third of the town’s population. In public, Italian, German, and Slovene were regularly spoken, or as Valvasor put it: “In Laybach, the customary vernaculars are generally Carniolan and German, but the nobles and merchants also use Italian.”6 Although a sizable part of the population of Ljubljana-Laibach was able to use several vernaculars or was at least bilingual, the native language of the majority had always been the Slavic vernacular we now call Slovene. Some form of German, on the other hand, was the first language of a significant minority, about a quarter of the population. It was the preferred spoken language of the upper class, although most Carniolan burghers and nobles could also speak Slovene and typically had a soft spot for “our Carniolan language.” As a written language, German had an even larger role. It was predominant in correspondence, education, administration, and—as the role of Italian had been diminishing since the eighteenth century—commerce. Slovene had been used in written form only sporadically, mostly to convey trivial content.7 German owed its dominance in written communication and in the upper strata of society to its usefulness, the linguistic competence of the inhabitants of Ljubljana-Laibach, and its prestige. German was more useful because it was spoken, written, and read all over Central Europe. Burghers and nobles were more competent in German, especially in writing, because they were educated in it. In addition, the use of German was a social marker, signifying an elevated status. 5  Boris Golec, “Regionalne razlike v jezikovni podobi prebivalstva slovenskih celinskih mest med 16. in 18. stoletjem” [Regional differences in the language of the residents of Slovene continental towns between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries], Zgodovinski časopis 57 (2003): 32–5. 6  “Die gewöhnliche Sprach ist zu Laybach insgemein die Crainerische und Teutsche, auch bey dem Adel und Kaufleuten die Italiänische.” Johann Weichard Valvasor, Die Ehre deß Hertzogthums Crain, vol. 11 (Laybach, 1689), 708. 7  Golec, “Regionalne razlike,” 23–38; Marko Štuhec, “Iz Lesc v Ljubljano po francosko: Prispevek k poznavanju jezikovne rabe kranjskega plemstva v prvi polovici 18. stoletja” [From Lesce to Ljubljana in French: Linguistic customs of the nobility of Carniola in the first half of the eighteenth century], Zgodovinski časopis 60 (2006): 327–43.

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During the last decades of the eighteenth century, these circumstances gradually began to change as the traditional hierarchy of languages became increasingly questioned. When a Carniolan monk, Marcus (Marko) Pohlin, published his Kraynska grammatika [Carniolan grammar] in 1768, he put considerable effort into persuading his readers that the Carniolan Slavic language was as useful and as important as any other language. He wrote in his introduction: Any well-founded language has its praise, fame, and benefit. The human society makes use of the same to its advantage, as well as the opening of thoughts, and the immortalization of things … We should not be ashamed of our mother tongue, dearest compatriots! It is not as bad as you believe.8 In the last decades of the eighteenth and in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the notion that the Carniolan Slavic language could and should be used in every situation gained traction among various local intellectuals, priests, and nobles. As such, they promoted its use in non-traditional contexts, especially in literature and education. Anton Tomaž Linhart adapted two plays, Valentin Vodnik published a collection of poems and—for a short while—a newspaper Lublanske novice [Ljubljana news], and Jurij (Georg) Japelj prepared a new translation of the Bible. The Carniolan Slavic vernacular was also used as the language of instruction in elementary schools and—during the short-lived French administration (1809–1813)—in junior high schools.9 Its elevation in the public sphere was also supported by the Catholic Church. The bishop of Ljubljana-Laibach, Karl Herberstein, one of the most prominent proponents of Reform Catholicism in the Monarchy, had been promoting the use of the native language in pastoral and educational activities intended for the “common people.”10 8  “Eine jede wohlgegründete Sprach hat ihr Lob, Ruhm, und Nutzen. Die Menschengesellschaft bedient sich derselben zu ihren Vortheil, und Eröffnung der Gedanken sowohl, als auch zur Verewigung der Sachen … Schämen wir uns nicht unserer Muttersprach liebste Landeßleute! Sie ist nicht so schlecht, als ihr es glaubet.” P. Marcus [Marko Pohlin], Kraynska grammatika: Das ist die crainerische Grammatik, oder Kunst die crainerische Sprach regelsrichtig zu reden, und zu schreiben (Laybach: Johann Friedrich Eger, 1768), 3, 11. 9  Peter Štih, Vasko Simoniti, and Peter Vodopivec, Slowenische Geschichte: Gesellschaft— Politik—Kultur (Graz: Leykam, 2008), 221–32. 10  Jernej Kosi, Kako je nastal slovenski narod: Začetki slovenskega nacionalnega gibanja v prvi polovici 19. stoletja [How the Slovene nation was built: The beginnings of the Slovene national movement in the first half of the nineteenth century] (Ljubljana: Sophia, 2013), 146–9.

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These developments were not isolated to Carniola. In Lower Styria and Southern Carinthia, which also had a Slovene-speaking majority, vernacular enthusiasts sought to improve the standing of their regional variants of Slovene too. Even though provincial patriotism was their primary motivation, there was often a wider dimension to their efforts. Most writers tried to incorporate at least some elements of other variants of Slovene as well as the sixteenth-century Protestant literary tradition into their language.11 They saw their efforts as a step towards a literary language that could transcend the solitary province and have a more universal use. Such endeavors were not new, as the Jesuits had tried to standardize a common South Slavic language starting as early as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,12 but this time the activists were much more successful. One of the reasons for this success was the support of the Habsburg state for such efforts, though paradoxically ratcheting up competition. On the one hand, Joseph II made German the official language in an effort to streamline the administration of the Habsburg Monarchy and, consequently, the importance and use of German grew.13 On the other hand, the authorities were increasingly aware of the importance of local vernaculars for their own educational efforts and communication with their subjects, and therefore they pragmatically supported their standardization and development all over the monarchy.14 In the beginning of the nineteenth century, all these activities culminated in the conceptualization of a single Slovene language. Whereas previous scholars mostly distinguished three related but distinct languages—Carniolan, Styrian, and Carinthian Slovene—the linguist Bartholomäus Kopitar claimed that the Slavic vernaculars of Carniola, Southern Carinthia, and Lower Styria (as well as 11  Kosi, Kako je nastal slovenski narod, 144–51. 12  Anita Peti-Stančić, “The (Western) South Slavic Language Question Revisited,” in A Linguist’s Linguist: Studies in South Slavic Linguistics in Honor of E. Wayles Browne, ed. Steven Franks, Vrinda Chidambaram, and Brian Joseph (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2009), 367. 13   Golec, “Regionalne razlike,” 37, 38; Peter Scherber, “Von der Zweisprachigkeit zur Einsprachigkeit: Wegmarken zur Entwicklung der slowenischen Nationalkultur im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Die Grundlagen der slowenischen Kultur: Bericht über die Konferenz der Kommission für interdisziplinäre Südosteuropa-Forschung im September 2002 in Göttingen, vol. 6 of Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, ed. France Bernik and Reinhard Lauer (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 162. 14  Karl Vocelka, Glanz und Untergang der höfischen Welt: Repräsentation, Reform und Reaktion im habsburgischen Vielvölkerstaat, vol. 7 of Österreichische Geschichte 1699–1815 (Vienna: Ueberreuter, 2001), 241, 242, 386; for Carniola and Styria, see Joachim Hösler, Von Krain zu Slowenien: Die Anfänge der nationalen Differenzierungsprozesse in Krain und der Untersteiermark von der Aufklärung bis zur Revolution 1768 bis 1848 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), 143–6.

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parts of Croatia) were actually just dialects of a single South Slavic language.15 Kopitar’s interpretation quickly gained popularity among intellectuals in all these lands, and they made strong efforts to amalgamate existing provincial literary languages into one. Simultaneously they began to call it Slovene (slovenski jezik), using an adjective that previously had held a wider meaning, as it had been generally used in the sense of Slavic.16 The new standard language established itself rather quickly in literature and, perhaps most importantly, in the new weekly paper Kmetijske in rokodelske novice [Agricultural and artisanal news], thus establishing an Andersonian unified field of exchange and communication. As the notion that a separate language denotes a separate nation had also been spreading, the idea of a distinct Slovene nation began to take shape in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The shift from assuming provincial identities to a wider Slovene identity can clearly be observed in the private letters of a small group of “patriots,” as they liked to call themselves, as well as in their various publications and in Novice.17 In March 1848, Slovene national thought, to use Joep Leerssen’s term, evolved into Slovene nationalism, as various individuals and smaller groups put forward the demand for the establishment of an autonomous Slovenia, a new Habsburg kingdom that would unite all the lands with a Slovene-speaking population. All the national programs demanded that Slovene be the language of administration, the judiciary, and education in the proposed Slovenia. In a flier, Matija Majar, who was the first to call for a United Slovenia, demanded that (1) the Slovene language should receive the same rights in Slovene lands that the German and Italian languages already enjoyed in German and Italian lands, (2) Slovenes be allowed to introduce Slovene in all offices and schools, “if we want to, when we want to, and however we want to,” and (3) every official in Slovenia be fluent in Slovene.18 After 1848, as Slovene nationalism had slowly been gaining ground, the increased role of Slovene in all spheres of life became the principal demand of Slovene nationalists. Even when they, because of unfavorable circumstances or 15  Kosi, Kako je nastal slovenski narod, 151–67. 16  Ibid., 170–89; Hösler, Von Krain zu Slowenien, 152–88; Kamusella, The Politics of Language and Nationalism, 294, 295; Martina Orožen, Oblikovanje enotnega slovenskega knjižnega jezika v 19. stoletju [The establishment of the Slovene literary language in the nineteenth century] (Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta, 1996). 17  Kosi, Kako je nastal slovenski narod, 236–360; Hösler, Von Krain zu Slowenien, 244–70. 18  Matija Majar, “Kaj Slovenci terjamo?,” in Janko Prunk, Slovenski narodni programi: Narodni programi v slovenski politični misli od 1848 do 1945 [Slovene national programs: National programs in Slovene political thought from 1848 to 1945] (Ljubljana: Društvo 2000, 1986), 152–9.

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political tactics, temporarily abandoned their demands for a United Slovenia, language demands remained an integral part of their platform.19 In fact, mirroring a trend seen in other parts of the monarchy, Slovene assumed an everlarger role as it gradually replaced German in the schools and administration.20 However, in Ljubljana-Laibach the traditional patterns of language use and the linguistic landscape did not significantly change until the 1860s, even though the city was the center of the Slovene national movement and had a Slovene-speaking majority. The upper class still spoke, read, and wrote mostly in German, street and shop signs were all written in German, and German was the language of the town hall. The most important Slovene poet of the period, France Prešeren, described the situation in his German sonnet with a tercet: “Deutsch sprechen in der Regel hier zu Lande/ Die Herrinnen und Herren, die befehlen,/ Slowenisch die, so von dem Dienerstande.”21 Other accounts confirm the validity of Prešeren’s assertion. In 1836, a newly arrived artisan, a patriotic Czech, needed six weeks to notice that, besides German, some inhabitants of the town spoke a language that strongly resembled his.22 A dozen years later, the naturalist Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn, who in 1848 spent a few days in Ljubljana-Laibach on his trip from Trieste (Trst/Triest) to Vienna, noted that the majority of the population spoke German, but “thought Slavic.”23 Even after the 1848 “Spring of Nations,” the linguistic situation had not changed significantly and Fran Šuklje, the future politician, remembered that “good families” only spoke Slovene with their servants, and that there was but one Slovene-only shop sign.24 At least at first sight, until the 1860s, the capital of Carniola was still Laibach, “the final little corner of our German fatherland,” as Johann Gottfried Seume described it at the beginning of the century.25 19  Vasilij Melik, “O nekaterih vprašanjih slovenske politike v začetku šestdesetih let 19. stoletja” [Some remarks on Slovene politics in the beginning of the sixties of the nineteenth century], in Slovenci 1848–1918: razprave in članki [The Slovenes 1848–1918: Papers and articles] (Maribor: Litera, 2002), 229–30. 20  Štih, Simoniti, and Vodopivec, Slowenische Geschichte, 264. 21  A literal English translation: “As a rule, ladies and gentlemen that give orders speak German in this land, and servants Slovene.” France Prešeren, “Warum sie, wert,” in Poesien: Auswahl deutscher Übersetzungen, ed. Jože Pogačnik (Munich: Trofenik, 1987), 178. 22  Henrik Tuma, Iz mojega življenja: spomini, misli, izpovedi [From my life: Memories, thoughts, declarations], ed. Branko Marušič (Ljubljana: Založba Tuma, 1997), 14. 23  “Die Bewohner sind größtentheils Slaven, die deutsch sprechen und slavisch denken.” Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn, Rückreise von Java nach Europa mit der sogenannten englischen Überlandpost: im September und October 1848, trans. J.K. Haßkarl (Leipzig: 1852), 180. 24  Fran Šuklje, Iz mojih spominov [From my memoirs], vol. 1, ed. Vasilij Melik (Ljubljana: Slovenska matica, 1988–1995), 14. 25   “Das letzte Zipfelchen unsers deutschen Vaterlandes.” Johann Gottfried Seume, Spaziergang nach Syrakus im Jahre 1802 (Braunschweig; Leipzig: 1803), 68.

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After the constitutional era started, the situation gradually changed, especially after the “Germans,” i.e., the liberal Constitutional party, dominated by the German speaking burghers lost the town hall in 1882. Slovene nationalists initiated systematic Slovenification. Slovene replaced German in local administration; it was established in schools, theater, and literature. Bilingual or Sloveneonly signs started to dominate the linguistic landscape, as Slovene assumed the role of the primary spoken language of all the social strata.26 Statistical data illustrates the diminishing importance of the German language as the share of those who had indicated it as their language of daily use slowly but steadily declined. In 1880, it was still almost 23 percent, but it fell to just above 15 percent in the next twenty years.27 Cases of individuals who indicated German as their language of daily use in 1880 but switched to Slovene in a later census further confirm the trend.28 However, the reversal of roles was not complete. German was still too important to be relegated to the purely secondary role of a minority language. It was the de facto state language of the Austrian half of the Monarchy, and it was a language of some 60 million Europeans. Knowledge of German was still nearly indispensable. Therefore, most Slovene-speaking inhabitants of LjubljanaLaibach had at least some familiarity with the language and many were fluent, especially the well educated.29 For ardent Slovene nationalists, who were convinced that a language embodied the “soul of a nation,” this maintenance of German was a constant irritation. Whereas Kopitar, whose novel classification of Slavic languages was the basis for the establishment of unified Slovene language, had still proclaimed that Slavs should learn German, and Prešeren, the first Slovene poet of note, had written a number of German poems and supported “poetic bilingualism,” bilingualism was increasingly rejected in the 26  See the chapter “Čas strmega padca kranjske ustavoverne stranke: 1880–1882” [The period of a steep decline of the Carniolan Constitutional Party: 1880–1882], in Matić, Nemci v Ljubljani, 197–232; Scherber, “Von der Zweisprachigkeit zur Einsprachigkeit,” 166; Vlado Valenčič, Zgodovina ljubljanskih uličnih imen [A history of the street names of Ljubljana] (Ljubljana: Zgodovinski arhiv Ljubljana, 1989), 75–137; Marija Lah, “Borba ljubljanske občine za slovensko uradovanje” [The struggle of the municipality of Ljubljana for Slovene administration], Kronika 5, no. 3 (1957): 139–46. 27  In 1880, 5,658 (22.79%) out of 24,824 inhabitants indicated German; in 1900, 5,423 (15.23%) out of 35,600. Special-Orts-Repertorium von Krain / Obširen imenik krajev na Krajnskem (Vienna: Verlag der k. k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1884), 1; Gemeindelexikon von Krain: bearbeitet auf Grund der Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31. Dezember 1900 (Vienna: Verlag der k. k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1905), 2. 28  Vlado Valenčič, “Etnična struktura ljubljanskega prebivalstva po ljudskem štetju 1880” [The ethnic structure of the inhabitants of Ljubljana according to the census of 1880], Zgodovinski časopis 28 (1974): 302–4. 29  Scherber, “Von der Zweisprachigkeit zur Einsprachigkeit,” 166.

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second half of the century.30 Slovene nationalists often echoed the claims of the Slovak leader Ľudovit Štúr, that bilingualism leads to a flawed character— as did all the other Central European nationalists.31 Despite such pressure, bilingualism did not vanish and some Slovene-speaking parents still sent their kids to German-language schools, because knowledge of German was still seen as a necessary condition for a successful career.32 In addition, the influence of German on the native spoken language—the Slovene of streets, markets, workshops, coffeehouses, and inns—was still enormous, in spite of all the efforts of nationalist purists. A glass was still glaž (from German Glas) and not kozarec; a stove was šporhet (from German Sparherd) and not štedilnik; a screwdriver šraufenciger (from German Schraubenzieher); a chimneysweep raufenkirer (from German Rauchfangkehrer), and so on.33 The point that I am trying to make here is certainly not that the politicization of language had no influence on the population of Ljubljana-Laibach. There is no doubt that nationalism had a very noticeable influence on people’s use of language and their understanding of its role. Nationalist demands resonated widely, especially when they addressed longstanding grievances, for example, the possibility of education or communication with authorities in the local native language. However, there were also limits to people’s willingness to adapt to a strict and unrealistic code of conduct. With that in mind, let me move to the other actor in my analysis, the Austrian armed forces. A peculiar feature of the Austrian army was the socalled regimental languages, that is to say, any languages spoken by more than a fifth of the recruits in a particular unit, which were used for the instruction of recruits, and the officers were under the obligation to learn them.34 This 30  For Kopitar, see: Hösler, Von Krain zu Slowenien, 146; and for Prešeren, ibid., 223–7; cf. Reinhard Lauer, “France Prešerens Sonett an die Slowenen, die in deutscher Sprache dichten,” Münchner Zeitschrift für Balkankunde 7/8 (1991): 75–83. 31   Štúr is quoted in István Fried, “Mehrsprachigkeit und Kulturbeziehungen in Ostmitteleuropa des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts,” Ungarn-Jahrbuch: Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Hungarologie 22 (1995/1996): 103. 32  Hösler, Von Krain zu Slowenien, 142. 33  Andrej Studen, Stanovati v Ljubljani: Socialnozgodovinski oris stanovanjske kulture Ljubljančanov pred prvo svetovno vojno [Living in Ljubljana: A sociohistorical outline of the residential culture of the inhabitants of Ljubljana before the First World War] (Ljubljana: Založba Škuc, 1995), 119, 120. 34  Johann Christoph Allmayer-Beck, “Die bewaffnete Macht in Staat und Gesellschaft,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. 5, Die bewaffnete Macht, ed. Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, 1987), 98, 99; Tamara Scheer, “Die k.u.k. Regimentssprachen: Eine Institutionalisierung der Sprachenvielfalt in der Habsburgermonarchie (1867/8–1914),” in Sprache, Gesellschaft und

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unique practice had been originally just an innovative solution to a practical problem, but after 1867 it was also based on the constitutional provision that stated that no citizen should be forced to use a language other than his own to communicate with the authorities. In this regard, the military appeared quite flexible, but other aspects of its rules and regulations were anything but open-minded. The language of command in the Common Army and the Austrian Landwehr (Territorial Army) was German. A single command language was not just a pragmatic solution for an effective leadership, but also a symbol of the army’s unity at a time when the armed forces were supposed to act as a bulwark of Habsburg patriotism against the onslaught of various nationalisms. Therefore, any attempts to introduce different languages of command were rejected resolutely by the emperor and his generals. In 1869, a Slovene MP, Lovro Toman, joined a number of other representatives in proposing the introduction of other command languages in the Landwehr, arguing that every soldier should be led in his national language.35 The proposal never stood a chance and was defeated by a large margin but must have nevertheless given the generals a major headache, because the transformation of the army into national contingents was their worst nightmare.36 This concern was why the military and the emperor tried to nip in the bud any attempts at replacing German as the language of command with other languages. When some Czech reservists deliberately began to use the Czech reply “zde!” instead of the German “hier!” during army maneuvers at the turn of the century, the emperor promptly threatened to impose martial law on the Bohemian Lands if the practice were not discontinued.37 The only exception to this rule was the Hungarian Honvéd (and by extension Hrvatsko domobranstvo, the Croatian Territorial Army), because the Hungarians had managed to assert the Hungarian language of command for their militia immediately after the Compromise of 1867.38 Furthermore, German was also the administrative language (Dienstsprache) of the Common Army and the Austrian Landwehr.39 As such, it was, among Nation: Institutionalisierung und Alltagspraxis, ed. Klaas-Hinrich Ehlers et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 75–92. 35  Stenographische Protokolle über die Sitzungen des Hauses der Abgeordneten des Reichrathes (SPSHAR), 4th session, 5321–5322, 5380–5382; Slovenski narod, 20 March 1869, 2, 3. 36   Allmayer-Beck, “Die bewaffnete Macht,” 85, 86. 37  Gunther E. Rothenberg, The Army of Francis Joseph (1976; West Lafayette, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1998), 130; Allmayer-Beck, “Die bewaffnete Macht,” 86. 38  Gunther E. Rothenberg, “Toward a National Hungarian Army: The Military Compromise of 1868 and Its Consequences,” Slavic Review 31 (1972): 805–16; László Péter, “The Army Question in Hungarian Politics 1867–1918,” Central Europe 4 (November 2006): 88. 39   Allmayer-Beck, “Die bewaffnete Macht,” 98.

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other things, used in all correspondence with civilian authorities. In this regard, the military was scarcely more flexible than in the case of the command language. When some local administrations started using non-German languages in their correspondence with the military, the Ministry of War closely monitored the situation and prepared exhaustive instructions. The main point was that German should and would remain the language of all official correspondence.40 Still, the changes in the civilian sphere could not be totally ignored and the use of bilingual correspondence was allowed in a limited number of cases. Again, Hungarian was a special case, as Hungarian politicians managed to squeeze some minor additional concessions out of the emperor after the constitutional crisis of 1903. However, for the most part he was not ready to appease the Hungarians and had been seriously considering an armed intervention rather than granting more wide-reaching concessions.41 Clearly, what was at stake in the case of the administrative language was actually not administration—although there is no doubt that maintaining a single administrative language made the job of military bureaucrats easier—but rather the symbolic value of German. A single administrative as well as command language was perceived as a symbol of unity by the emperor and the military, and all attempts to replace them were interpreted as attacks on one of the last bulwarks of empire. Considering the fact that their own national languages also had a huge symbolic value for all non-German nationalists, one cannot be surprised that they often perceived the army as a German institution, a supposed pillar of German supremacy. This attitude was manifest in Slovene nationalists too. For example, in 1909 Slovenec [Slovene], the daily of the dominant Slovene People’s Party, stated that there is “a lot of German national spirit in the army.”42 More than two decades earlier the liberal daily Slovenski narod [Slovene nation] had been even more direct: the German command language was presented as a

40  Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna, Kriegsarchiv (KA), War Ministry Records (KM), Präs, 50–9/1–6, 1907 and Präs, 50–9/2, 1908. 41  Norman Stone, “Constitutional Crisis in Hungary, 1903–1906,” The Slavonic and East European Review 45, no. 104 (1967): 163–182. Péter, “The Army Question,” 97–100; R.J.W. Evans, “Language and State Building: The Case of the Habsburg Monarchy,” Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 18, 19. On the plans for an armed intervention in Hungary, see Kurt Peball and Gunther E. Rothenberg, “Der Fall ‘U’: Die geplante Besetzung Ungarns durch die k.u.k. Armee im Herbst 1905,” in Aus drei Jahrhunderten: Beiträge zur österreichischen Heeres- und Kriegsgeschichte von 1645–1938, vol. 4 of Schriften des Heeresgeschichtlichen Museums in Wien (Vienna, Munich: Bundesverlag, 1969), 85–126. 42  “Novega duha v armado!” [New spirit into the army!], Slovenec, 19 August 1909, 4.

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means toward the Germanization of Austrian Slavs.43 By contrast, though, the relations between the army and Slovenes in Ljubljana-Laibach were rather good. There were sporadic conflicts, even violent ones, but in general the situation was unexpectedly calm. According to Heinrich Wieden von Alpenbach, an officer stationed there in the years 1893 to 1894, 1901 to 1904, and 1908, the town was military-friendly and the rapport with civilians “excellent.”44 The use of German by the military was rarely problematized on the local level and Slovene municipal politicians tried a number of times to lure additional units and headquarters to the town. Naturally, the question arises: How was such action even possible given the important role the Slovene language played in the nationalist mindset? How can we explain this apparent paradox, especially if we take into account nationalists’ constant criticism of the use of German or even of bilingualism by other state institutions, such as the railways and the post? First, let us remind ourselves that even when Slovene nationalism was one of the major factors that shaped the attitudes of the inhabitants of LjubljanaLaibach towards the German language, it was not the only one. We have already seen that a pragmatic outlook on language use had not been totally eradicated by nationalist exhortations. On the one hand, some were simply not bothered by German, or were even convinced that German and the army were a natural fit. Some Slovene-speaking veterans, for example, had no problem accepting German as the military language of command even as late as 1908.45 On the other hand, there were others who were not oblivious to the benefits that a large garrison brought, even if they supported the Slovenification of the town in principle. After all, at the time the military represented almost 7 percent of the city’s population.46 All of the soldiers had to be fed, dressed, housed, and entertained. As a result, the innkeepers, property owners, tailors, theater managers, brothel owners, and many others had a lot to lose if the military were to be chased out of the town. 43  M. D–r., “Avstrijski Nemci in ravnopravnost” [Austrian Germans and equality], Slovenski narod, 19 January 1886, 1, 2. 44   K A, Nachlaß Wieden von Alpenbach (B/30:1), Heinrich Wieden von Alpenbach, “Lebensgeschichtliche Skizze,” unpublished manuscript, sheet 6, 2–4. See also the chapter “Ljubljansko meščanstvo in častniki” [Townspeople of Ljubljana and officers], in Stergar, “Vojski prijazen in zaželen garnizon,” 32–37. 45  Rok Stergar, “National Indifference in the Heyday of Nationalist Mobilization? Ljubljana Military Veterans and the Language of Command,” Austrian History Yearbook 43 (2012): 45–58. 46  The population of Ljubljana-Laibach in 1900 was 39,139, and of these 2,592 (6.62 %) were officers, NCOs, or soldiers. Gemeindelexikon von Krain, 2.

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In fact, in these regards even Slovene nationalists could be more pragmatic than their front-page editorials, campaign speeches, programs, and declarations illustrate. The municipal council of Ljubljana-Laibach, in which first the united National Party and later the liberal nationalists, the National Progressive Party, had a clear majority from 1882, regularly approved funds for the construction of barracks and petitioned the authorities to move additional troops and military institutions to the town. In 1898, for example, the council tried unsuccessfully to persuade the War Ministry to relocate the command of the 3rd Corps from Graz to Ljubljana-Laibach.47 In fact, even when the National Party was still in opposition and the Germans held a majority in the municipal council, Slovene nationalists made the construction of new barracks and an enlargement of the garrison one of the key points in their election campaigns in 1880 and 1881. They accused the “Germans” of incompetence because they could not recruit additional units to the town, and promised voters that they would do much better. The language question was never even mentioned in this context, even though Slovene nationalists had otherwise promised the Slovenification of the town.48 Nationalists clearly knew that the army was not going to budge in this regard, but were nonetheless eager to expand the military presence. The so-called “pillar of German domination” was apparently more than welcome as long as it also supported the local economy. Such pragmatism was no exception: Italian nationalists in Trento (Trient) also put more emphasis on the economic benefits that the military generated than on ideology.49 However, there is another aspect to consider in regard to Slovene nationalists and their surprising tolerance of the German-speaking army. To further understand the reasons behind it, we must widen our focus and look at a peculiarity of Slovene politics during the constitutional era. Most Slovene politicians made great effort to emphasize their loyalty to the emperor and the Habsburg dynasty, hoping that this would help them realize their goals, and hence appeared as military-friendly as possible because it was perfectly obvious that the armed forces were especially dear to Francis Joseph.50 That is why 47   K A, KM, Präs, Sachregister, 1898, keyword “Laibach.” The relevant document KM, Präs, 25–3, 1898, has not been preserved. 48  Rok Stergar, Slovenci in vojska, 1867–1914: Slovenski odnos do vojaških vprašanj od uvedbe dualizma do začetka 1. svetovne vojne [The Slovenes and the army, 1867–1914: Slovene attitudes regarding military matters from the introduction of Dualism until the beginning of the First World War] (Ljubljana: Historia, 2004); See the chapter “Vmesna epizoda: boj za ljubljansko garnizijo” [An interim episode: The battle for the garrison of Ljubljana], 156–64. 49  Fontana, “Trient als Festungs- und Garnisonsstadt,” 184–6, 197. 50  Stergar, Slovenci in vojska, passim; Stergar, “Fragen des Militärwesens in der slowenischen Politik 1867–1914,” Österreichische Osthefte 46 (2004): 391–422.

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Slovene MPs, Catholic as well as liberal, usually voted in favor of defense bills, and why politicians and newspaper editors were even willing to speak in favor of the German command and administrative language. In short, they supported (or at least tolerated) policies they privately did not necessarily agree with, because they were trying to win over “high places,” as the German-language weekly Laibacher Wochenblatt smugly, but rightly, noted in 1886.51 Moreover, the coalition of the National Progressive Party, otherwise a master of nationalist outbidding, with the Germans in the Carniolan Diet (Landtag), shows that Slovene nationalists were also ready to compromise on their principles in order to outmaneuver their domestic political rivals. The coalition agreement committed the representatives of the National Progressive Party to vote for the continuation of funding for the teaching of German in Slovene-language elementary schools as well as for the German theater, but to oppose Sloveneonly street signs in Ljubljana-Laibach.52 In order to keep the Catholic National Party (after 1905, the Slovene People’s Party) out of power, the liberals, who had previously declared the effort in favor of Slovene-only signs an essential part of the great battle between “haughty-pitiless Germanness and oppressed Slavism,” quickly forgot such high-sounding words.53 In the case of the army’s rules and regulations, political maneuvering reached its pinnacle in 1912, when the People’s Party spared no effort in helping to push the new defense bill through the Reichsrat. Its MPs voted against 51  “Hardly any other phenomenon of our public life is so interesting to observe as the large fluctuations of our national parties with regard to certain government postulates, which are unpleasant to them, but which they know to be very important for the authoritative places … The question of the use of the German language as the de facto state language and as the language of command and administration in the Army also belongs to these sensitive subjects, in which the described fluctuations can be observed particularly well.” (“Kaum eine andere Erscheinung unseres öffentlichen Lebens ist so interessant zu beobachten als das große Schwanken unserer nationalen Parteien gewissen staatlichen Postulaten gegenüber, die ihnen unangenehm sind, von denen sie aber wissen, daß man maßgebenden Ortes entscheidenden Werth auf dieselben legt…. Zu diesen heiklen Themen, bei denen sich das bezeichnete Schwanken besonders gut beobachten läßt, gehört auch die Frage des Gebrauches der deutschen Sprache als faktische Staatssprache und als Commando- und Dienstsprache der Armee.”) “Politischer Aberwitz,” Laibacher Wochenblatt, 30 January 1886, 5. 52  Matić, Nemci v Ljubljani, 299–325; Andrej Rahten, “Der Krainer Landtag,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. 7/2, Die regionalen Repräsentativkörperschaften, ed. Helmut Rumpler and Peter Urbanitsch, (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, 2000), 1755–59: Valenčič, Zgodovina ljubljanskih uličnih imen, 97–99. 53  “Upupa Epops,” Slovenski narod, 14 July 1894, 1. For more on the position of the National Progressive Party on street signs before the coalition, see Valenčič, Zgodovina ljubljanskih uličnih imen, 75–91.

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amendments that would have diminished the role of German in the Landwehr, and they even—as the only Slav MPs—voted against the use of non-German languages in correspondence with local authorities. One of the MPs bluntly stated: “However, not a single man has been denationalized by the common language of command.”54 Not surprisingly, the Reichspost, a mouthpiece of the Belvedere Circle, was thrilled.55 All this was a demonstration of the hyper-loyal and military-friendly course that the leaders of the Slovene People’s Party, convinced that the heir to the throne, Francis Ferdinand, and the army were the only forces capable of carrying out a thorough reform of the monarchy, set before the outbreak of the First World War.56 In order not to squander any potential—or imagined—political gains on the state level, Slovene nationalists had to exercise restraint on the local level. Hence, there was almost no nationalist outbidding over the use of German by the military units stationed in the town, as both parties were for the most part unwilling to risk a conflict with the military. In 1882, when the Slovene parties gained a majority in the municipal council and swiftly replaced German with Slovene in the municipal administration, correspondence with the military remained a rare but explicit exception to the new rules. The new language policy clearly stated that “the Town Hall shall communicate with the armed forces in the language of the army.”57 Only after Austria-Hungary collapsed, the mayor decided of his own accord—“ex praesidio and via facti”—that all the correspondence with other offices and authorities, “including the military,” should be in Slovene.58 In any case, the example of the long-time mayor of Ljubljana-Laibach, Ivan Hribar, clearly demonstrates the dangers of a less military-friendly approach. After the local commanders concluded that he was no friend of the army, they made sure that the emperor did not validate his 54  “Aber durch die gemeinsame einheitliche Kommandosprache wurde noch kein Mann entnationalisiert.” SPSHAR, 21st session, 2731, 2732, 2741–2776, 2784–2809, 2820–2854, 2865–2898, 2924–2959, 2970–2978, 4406–4434, 4450–4482, 4498–4538, 4547–4591, 4600– 4659, 4669–4737, 4748–4778, 4779–4822, 4835–4850. The quote is from p. 4430. 55  “Ein Slave für die einheitliche Armeesprache,” Reichspost, 20 June 1912, 3. 56  See the chapter “Poskus iskanja zaveznikov—SLS, generali in vojaška zakonodaja iz leta 1912” [An attempt to find allies—the Slovene People’s Party, the generals, and the defense bill of 1912], in Stergar, Slovenci in vojska, 220–6; Andrej Rahten, Slovenska ljudska stranka v dunajskem parlamentu: Slovenska parlamentarna politika v Haburški monarhiji 1897–1914 [The Slovene People’s Party in the Vienna Parliament: Slovene parliamentary politics in the Habsburg Monarchy 1897–1914] (Celje: Založba Panevropa, 2001), 105–24. 57   Zgodovinski arhiv Ljubljana [Municipal Archives of Ljubljana], Manuscript Book Collection (LJU 488), Cod III, 33, “Gemeinderaths-Sitzungs-Protokoll vom Jahre 1882,” minutes for 27 October 1882, f136r–f137r. 58  Lah, “Borba ljubljanske občine za slovensko uradovanje,” 140, 142, 146.

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reelection in 1910. Consequently, Hribar, a popular and successful mayor, had to withdraw from municipal politics in order to limit the damage to his party. And this intervention was certainly not the only example of its kind: in 1912 the navy managed to bring about the suspension of the municipal autonomy of Pola (Pula) after a prolonged conflict with Italian nationalists who dominated its municipal council.59 Not surprisingly, Hribar’s successor, Ivan Tavčar, made every effort to appear as military-friendly as possible.60 However, to reduce the motives for a continued acceptance of the army and its preference for German to political pragmatism would be much too reductionist. We must not forget that the overwhelming majority of Slovenes—that is Slovene nationalists—supported the continued existence of the Austrian state. They did not experience any antagonism between their Austrian state patriotism and Slovene nationalism, as anti-Austrian nationalism was a minority view even as late as the period of the Balkan Wars.61 Indeed, one of the reasons for the described deviation from nationalist orthodoxy was the awareness of the inevitable need for a compromise if the Austrian state were to survive. It must have been obvious even to most nationalists that communication within the empire was needed and that German was the most obvious if not ideal choice for that, as the future vice mayor of Ljubljana-Laibach, Karl Triller, acknowledged in a private letter in 1899. German would be the intermediary language as long as Austria existed, and Slovenes better accept such state of affairs, he wrote.62 In effect, most Slovene nationalists came to the same conclusion as Archduke Rudolph in 1886, when he wrote that an artificial language would have been an ideal solution, but—since it was not available—German would have to do.63 After all, many politicians had personal experience from the parliament in which German was the lingua franca, although all other languages were allowed on the floor. However, as most MPs only understood their native language and German, non-German languages were rarely used. When one wanted to take part in the debate, one used German; it was the medium

59  Wiggermann, K.u.K. Kriegsmarine und Politik, 279–300. 60  Stergar, Slovenci in vojska, 210, 216–18. 61  Fran Zwitter, “The Slovenes in the Habsburg Monarchy,” Austrian History Yearbook 3, no. 2 (1967): 159–88; Vasilij Melik, “Slovenci in avstrijska država 1848–1918” [The Slovenes and the Austrian state, 1848–1918], in Slovenci 1848–1918, 78–84. 62  Ivan Hribar, Moji spomini [My memoirs], vol. 1, ed. Vasilij Melik (Ljubljana: Slovenska matica, 1983–84), 407. 63  Kronprinz Rudolf, “Skizzen aus der österreichischen Politik der letzten Jahre,” in “Majestät, Ich warne Sie …”: Geheime und private Schriften, ed. Brigitte Hamann (1979; Munich: Piper, 1987), 172, 173.

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of communication, whereas the use of other languages signaled primarily a political gesture.64 To summarize, besides nationalism, pragmatism and an interest in the preservation of the Austrian state were important factors that shaped the outlook of the local population on the use of German by the army. In a way, these considerations mitigated the dogmatism of nationalist views on language and thus opened some space for the continued use of German. Hence, there was no great need for the army to change its language policy even when Slovene nationalism was in full bloom. Nevertheless, the armed forces also showed some flexibility and a willingness to acknowledge new realities, further defusing a potentially explosive situation. On the national level, the attention to the proper use of regimental languages by officers was noticeable. After all, the nationalist press and politicians, who regularly submitted interpellations against the minister of defense on such matters, would have promptly noticed any (real or imagined) disregard for non-German languages.65 Even more important for the situation in Ljubljana-Laibach was the fact that the army was increasingly prepared to use Slovene in its communication with the public; sometimes it even used Slovene in a symbolically important way. The military used Slovene on posters, leaflets, and in newspaper announcements, although this was not a recent development. Indeed, it had used Slovene in propaganda leaflets and proclamations since as early as the French Wars.66 In such cases, the language had clearly been used to make communication with the Slovene-speaking population easier or even possible. However, the public sometimes ascribed a symbolic value to the use of a certain language even if such significance had not been intended. The messenger simply could not control how the message would be understood. A case from Celje (Cilli), a Lower Styrian provincial town with a German-speaking majority and a significant Slovene-speaking minority, excellently illustrates this point. In 1905 a noncommissioned officer, Markus (Marko) Korošec, pasted a Slovene-only poster on a military warehouse in the town. According to his account, it was intended for the merchants from the predominantly Slovene-speaking countryside.67 64  R.J.W. Evans, “Language and State Building,” 15. 65  Elfriede Jandesek, “Die Stellung des Abgeordnetenhauses der im Reichsrate vertretenen Königreiche und Länder zu Fragen des Militärs, 1867–1914” (PhD diss., University of Vienna, 1964), passim. 66  Vlado Valenčič, “Slovenščina v uradih in v uradni publicistiki od srede 18. do srede 19. stoletja” [The Slovene language in official use and official publications from the mideighteenth until the mid-nineteenth century], Zgodovinski časopis 31 (1977): 334. 67   K A, KM, Präs, 50-26/1, 1905, a letter by the War Ministry, Präs. Nr. 5032, Vienna, 25 August 1905. Korošec was reprimanded because the poster was not bilingual, and at first he was

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Obviously, we cannot discount the possibility that he was a closet Slovene nationalist set on provocation, but if we believe his explanation, this was not the case. The use of Slovene had but a single purpose: communication with the Slovene speakers. Nevertheless, German nationalists clearly saw it as a symbol, a political gesture. Josef Pommer, a local MP, promptly protested to the Austrian prime minister and the Grazer Tagblatt alleged that the lone Slovene poster in Celje (Cilli) was clear evidence of the army’s flirting with “Panslavic agitation.”68 What had probably been intended as a means to communicate a message was clearly perceived as a dangerous symbol by nationalists bent on preventing all attempts to challenge the dominance of German in the town.69 We can safely assume that Slovene nationalists in Ljubljana-Laibach also attributed symbolic value to similar occurrences. For example, it is fairly certain that they viewed the rare occasions in which the army used Slovene in official correspondence with local authorities as important steps in their pursuit of a complete Slovenification of local administration. Even though the commander of the 3rd Corps took great pains to explain to the War Ministry that bilingual correspondence had been just an exception necessitated by the urgency of a specific task—merely a pragmatic decision—there is no doubt that nationalists saw a large dose of symbolism in such occurrences.70 However, there were also situations when the use of Slovene had a decidedly symbolic meaning, in which it was used to show that the armed forces valued it. For example, the ranking officers in Ljubljana-Laibach regularly made an effort to appear at Slovene events to demonstrate the neutrality of the armed forces, and on these occasions they would sometimes say a few words in Slovene. The importance of such gestures should not be underestimated; in Przemyśl, for example, Polish elites were very pleased with the officers’ use of the Polish language, especially when compared to the preference of local businessmen and intellectuals for German.71 The use of Slovene was supposed to be transfered to another unit. However, someone at the ministry decided against the transfer, noting on the margins of the report: “den Alldeutschen möchte ich diese Konzession nicht machen.” 68   K A, KM, Präs, 50-26/1, 1905, a letter by the Austrian defense minister Franz Schönaich to the War Ministry, Präs. No. 645, Vienna, 31 July 1905; “Die Slavisierung durch die Militärbehörde,” Grazer Tagblatt, 21 July 1905 (morning ed.), 2; ibid., 23 July 1905 (morning ed.), 7. 69  Janez Cvirn, “Jezikovna politika celjske občine na prelomu stoletja” [The language policy of the municipality of Celje at the turn of the century], Zgodovinski časopis 44 (1990): 199–214. 70   K A, KM, Präs, 50-9/1–6, 1907, a letter of the Commando of the 3rd Corps to the War Ministry, Präs. Nr. 205, Graz, 9 February 1907. 71  Fahey, “Undermining a Bulwark of the Monarchy,” 151.

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also commonplace when local regiments appeared in public. In addition, the regimental band performed Slovene marches and occasionally even the unofficial national anthem. The army’s adaptation to changes in the linguistic landscape was also important. In 1911, the command of the 3rd Corps and the War Ministry corresponded about a bilingual nameplate on one of the barracks in Ljubljana-Laibach, and at long last decided that it was acceptable as long as German was on top.72 The decision is a perfect illustration of the compromises that the army was willing to make in order to adjust to a shifting environment. Slovene, or any other recognized language, could be used in an official capacity, as long as German retained a privileged position. Without a doubt, such concessions, however minor, were an indirect consequence of the sweeping changes that nationalism brought to the civilian sphere. The military simply could not afford to ignore completely the importance an ever-larger part of the population—and a number of highly influential actors—ascribed to non-German languages. However, the views of military men, specifically the officers, on the role and value of different languages also have to be considered. Clearly, the officer corps was predominantly German speaking, and there is no doubt many officers were convinced that there was a natural order to things that included a hierarchy of languages. At the same time, most of them were not German nationalists: their allegiance was to the empire and the emperor, as István Deák has shown.73 However, their supranationality often had a distinctly German flavor, as many were convinced that the German language was not only more useful, but also culturally superior.74 In many respects, the attitudes of officers were very similar to the views of the German liberal elites, who until the era of Eduard Taaffe had supported 72   K A, KM, Präs, 33-48/1, 1911. For similar cases in Cracow and Gorizia (Gorica/Görz), see: KA, KM, Präs, 50-12/1, 1907 and Präs, 33-17/1, 1912. 73  István Deák, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); compare R.J.W. Evans, “Unwarlike Warriors,” The New York Review of Books, 16 August 1990, 47–50, and Lothar Höbelt, “Kein Bismarck und kein Moltke: Regierung, Militär und Außenpolitik in Österreich-Ungarn 1860 bis 1890,” in Das Militär und der Aufbruch in die Moderne 1860 bis 1890: Armeen, Marinen und der Wandel von Politik, Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft in Europa, den USA sowie Japan, ed. Michael Epkenhans and Gerhard P. Groß (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003), 80. 74  Antonio Schmidt-Brentano, “Die österreichische beziehungsweise österreichischungarische Armee von Erzherzog Carl bis Conrad von Hötzendorf,” in Österreich und die deutsche Frage im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Probleme der politisch-staatlichen und soziokulturellen Differenzierung im deutschen Mitteleuropa, ed. Heinrich Lutz and Helmut Rumpler, vol. 9 of Wiener Beiträge zur Geschichte der Neuzeit, ed. Grete Klingenstein et al. (Vienna: Böhlau, 1982), 247, 248; Laurence Cole, Military Culture and Popular Patriotism in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 321, 322.

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the supranational state as long as it upheld the continued dominance of the German language and understood Germanness as a final stage in the personal growth of non-Germans.75 Like-minded officers equated the German language with Austrian patriotism; hence, they were convinced that Slovene usage was an indisputable sign of Russophilia, or they supported state funding of German schools in the predominantly Italian Gorizia (Gorica/Görz), to give but two examples.76 Not surprisingly, then, they opposed any changes to the rules and regulations that would give non-German languages a greater role in the military. Indeed, some even tried to reduce the usage of other languages in opposition to the existing guidelines. In 1873, for example, the officers of the 7th Infantry Regiment from Klagenfurt (Celovec) petitioned the War Ministry for an exemption from the obligatory use of Slovene as a regimental language. They argued that most Slovene-speaking soldiers already understood German and the rest could learn it quickly, and therefore Slovene was not needed. Besides, they insisted, the unit traditionally had a “German character.”77 Then again, there were also officers who understood that the times had changed. They were certainly not ready to meet all nationalist demands, but they were ready to evolve and adapt. Let me give just one example relating to Ljubljana-Laibach. When the War Ministry was preparing its opinion on the proposal of the Carniolan Diet to replace bilingual town signs with Slovene ones, the officer in charge of the case wrote a remark on the margins of his report. He proposed that the military stop supporting German at all costs and face reality—stop supporting shipwrecked policies and instead provide for better maps, was his suggestion.78 In the end he did not prevail, but his remarks are 75  P  ieter M. Judson, “Inventing Germans: Class, Nationality, and Colonial Fantasy at the Margins of the Hapsburg Monarchy,” Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 33 (September 1993): 49, 50; Ian Reifowitz, “Threads Intertwined: German National Egoism and Liberalism in Adolf Fischhof’s Vision for Austria,” Nationalities Papers 29 (2001): 441–58. On the arrival of Taaffe as a watershed, see also Jörg Kirchhoff, Die Deutschen in der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie: Ihr Verhältnis zum Staat, zur deutschen Nation und ihr kollektives Selbstverständnis (1866/67–1918) (Berlin: Logos, 2001), 63–70. 76  On the use of Slovene, see Karel Clarici, Knjiga moje mladosti [The book of my youth], ed. and trans. Marjan Mušič (Ljubljana: Slovenska matica, 1981), 101, 102. On German schools in Gorizia (Gorica/Görz), see: KA, KM, Präs, 31-24/1, 1912, a letter of the command of the 3rd Corps to the War Ministry, Präs. Nr. 787, Graz, 23 February 1912. 77  The petition and its rejection are preserved in the correspondence of Andrej Komel, an Austrian officer and a prolific author of Slovene military manuals. Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica (National and University Library), Ljubljana, Department of Manuscripts, Ms. 1387. 78   K A, KM, Präs, 50-12/1, 1913, a report of the War Ministry, Präs. Nr. 812, Vienna, 24 January 1913.

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an important indication of developments within the army. For some officers it was not self-evident that the status quo enshrining the privileged position of German had to carry on indefinitely. Such officers were a minority and their influence on decision-making was not great, but they may have helped to ease the transition into a new era. Furthermore, their very existence indicates that there was the potential for an even more flexible attitude of the armed forces. In conclusion, the armed forces, traditionally multilingual to some extent, certainly did alter their linguistic practices as the situation in LjubljanaLaibach changed. The army did not only use Slovene in its communication with the Slovene-speaking public, but also willingly employed it in a symbolically important way, for example, on the nameplates of barracks. Thus, the dominant role of German did erode slightly as the army acknowledged the change that Slovene nationalism and its emphasis on the Slovene language had brought to the town. However, as the relative importance of Slovenes was not very large and because Slovene nationalism was rather moderate, the modifications that the military undertook did not have to be extensive. German retained its dominant position, whereas Slovene was used a bit more often, but as a secondary language. Alternatively, it seems that the willingness of Slovene nationalists to compromise actually had a more noticeable impact on the pace of the Slovenification of Ljubljana-Laibach. Whereas radical Italian nationalists in Pula (Pola), to name but one example, did not shrink from conflict with the military and relentlessly pursued their nationalizing goal—a monolingual Italian town— Slovene nationalists were much more ready to appease the military.79 That is why, for example, the municipal administration still used German in correspondence with the military while at the same time they were engaged in a bitter dispute with the provincial governor over his use of German in official communication. To reiterate, in Ljubljana-Laibach the pragmatism of the population and a number of factors that lessened the zeal of nationalists—mostly political tactics but also a genuine interest in the preservation of the Austrian state—combined to prevent the emergence of an unresolvable conflict between Slovene nationalists and the army on the role and use of languages. The flexibility of the army, although very limited, also helped. Even though their points of view were seemingly incompatible, the army and the Slovene nationalists managed to find a modus vivendi because they both acted pragmatically. This feature of Slovene nationalists further confirms recent assertions that in the Habsburg Monarchy ethnic nationalisms were not necessarily centrifugal, and that a 79  Wiggerman, K.u.K. Kriegsmarine und Politik, 181, 182, and passim.

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more nuanced interpretation of their attitude toward the Habsburg state is warranted.80 In addition, the pragmatism of inhabitants in general is additional evidence that nationalism, while a powerful ideology, was still just “a perspective on the world,” to use the words of Rogers Brubaker.81 It demonstrates once again that national indifference, bilingualism, Austrian patriotism, dynastic loyalty, and similar practices and attitudes were very much present in an era that was long interpreted as a time of triumphant nationalisms.82 80  Laurence Cole and Daniel L. Unowsky, “Introduction,” in The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy, ed. Laurence Cole and Daniel L. Unowsky (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 2, 3. 81  Rogers Brubaker, “Ethnicity without Groups,” in Ethnicity without Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 7–27. 82  There is a growing body of literature on these phenomena. Besides Deák, Cole and Unowsky, see Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006); Kai Struve, “Polish Peasants in Eastern Galicia—Indifferent to the Nation or Pillars of Polishness? National Attitudes in the Light of Józef Chałasiński’s Collection of Peasant Youth Memoirs,” Acta Poloniae Historica 109 (2014): 37–59; Daniel L. Unowsky, The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism: Imperial Celebrations in Habsburg Austria, 1848–1916 (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2005); Tara Zahra, “Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis,” Slavic Review 69, no. 1 (2010): 93–119; Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). For the Slovene case, see Stergar, “National Indifference.”

Chapter 5

Language Transition in the Town of Osijek at the End of Austro-Hungarian Rule (1902–1913) Anamarija Lukić 1 Introduction Modern and contemporary urban history still awaits more intensive research into the transformation of Croatian cities during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This period was marked by multiple and often rapid changes, contributing in each city to specific historical memories that touch upon present times and demand explanation. This might even include effects on the parlances of the inhabitants, which one might still hear in their accent, slang, localisms, and other characteristics. The four most common languages in Osijek at the turn of the twentieth century were German, Croatian, Serbian, and Hungarian. Even today, the everyday vocabulary used by many Croatian-speaking Osijekers contains a multitude of Germanisms. These originate from the time when many of the citizens of Osijek used German in their everyday communication, even though in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, Croatian was the language of administration, schools, the university, and largely also within the Catholic Church. Croatian started to gain momentum in Osijek by around 1900, although many of its inhabitants remained native German speakers till the end of Austro-Hungarian period (1918) and even after. It was as late as the census of 1910 when a relative majority of Croatian native speakers was declared for the first time (actually 39.18%, while 37.81% declared German as their mother tongue).1 Features of the “Osijek 1  These figures follow Agneza Szabo, “Socijalni sastav stanovništva” [The social structure of population], in Od turskog do suvremenog Osijeka [From Turkish to contemporary Osijek], ed. Ive Mažuran (Zagreb; Osijek: Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, Zavod za znanstveni rad: Poglavarstvo grada; Školska knjiga, 1996), 155–62, here 158. According to the published data of the census of 1910, the percentage of residents in Osijek with Croatian as mother tongue was slightly higher (1900: 30.1%, 1910: 40.3%; German, 1900: 49.9%, 1910: 35%): “A ma­ gyar szent korona országainak 1910. évi népszámlálása. Első rész: Népesség főbb adatai községek és népesebb puszták, telepek szerint” [The census of the countries of the Hungarian Holy Crown in 1910. Main data of the population by communities, populous homesteads, and settlements] (Budapest: Magyar Kir. Statisztikai Hivatal, 1912), no. 6. The censuses of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia of 1891, 1900, and 1910 distinguish between Croatian and Serbian

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dialect” of the German language have been uncovered by Germanists, for example, Velimir Petrović,2 as well as Vlado Obad,3 who conducted research on Osijek and German-language Slavonian literature. The representation and position of German in relation to the Croatian language in the city of Osijek was described by Stanislav Marjanović,4 but his monograph mostly covers the period of the second half of the nineteenth century when the German language was still dominant. It does not assess the transition from German to Croatian at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the number of Osijek citizens whose mother tongue was German started to wane, and a group of Osijek intellectuals found ways to popularize the Croatian language and make it most visible and dominant. The complex and at first glance curious linguistic situation in the city of Osijek at the time when Croatian increasingly entered all spheres of life is the focus of this chapter.5

as mother tongues, to which the social meaning of confessional belonging contributed, while urban Catholic families with Croatian or German mother tongues largely intermingled. 2  Velimir Petrović, “O nekim obilježjim osječkog njemačkog narječja” [About some of the features of the Esseker dialect], Godišnjak Njemačke narodnosne zajednice. VDG Jahrbuch [The German national community yearbook], (1999): 121–40; Petrović, “Međujezični kontakti na primjeru esekerskog narječja” [Interlingual contacts on the example of the Esseker dialect], Književna revija 43, no. 3 (2003): 123–36; Petrović, Esekerski rječnik = Essekerisches Woerterbuch (Zagreb: Filozofski fakultet, Odsjek za germanistiku, 2008); Petrović, Esekerski tekstovi [Esseker texts] (Osijek: Njemačka zajednica—Zemaljska udruga Podunavskih Švaba u Hrvatskoj, 2011); Petrović, “Esekerski—što je to?” [The Esseker dialect—What is it?], Godišnjak njemačke narodnosne zajednice—VDG Jahrbuch (1995). 3  Vlado Obad, “Hrvatska moderna u memoarskim svjedočenjima Vilme Vukelić” [Croatian modernism in the memoirs of Vilma Vukelic], Croatica. Prinosi proučavanju hrvatske književnosti, 22, nos. 35–36 (1991): 257–72; Obad, “Esekersko građanstvo u djelima Vilme Vukelić” [Esseker citizens in literary work by Vilma Vukelic], Književna revija 43, no. 3 (2003): 101–20; Obad, Njemačko novinstvo Osijeka u promicanju građanske culture [German journalism of Osijek in promotion of the civilian culture] (Osijek: Njemačka zajednica—zemaljska udruga podunavskih Švaba u Hrvatskoj, 2014); Obad, Slavonska književnost na njemačkom jeziku [Slavonian literature in the German language] (Osijek; Revija: Radničko sveučilište “Božidar Maslarić”; Izdavački centar Revija, 1989). 4  Stanislav Marjanović, Hrvatsko pjevačko društvo “Lipa” u Osijeku 1876–1986. [Croatian singing society “Lipa” in Osijek, 1876–1986] (Osijek, Hrvatsko pjevačko društvo “Lipa,” 1987). 5  See also Anamarija Lukić and Miljenko Brekalo, “List “Narodna obrana” o pitanju jezika u gradu Osijeku (1902.–1914.)” [The newspaper Narodna obrana on the language issue in the city of Osijek (1902–1914)], Godišnjak Njemačke zajednice. VDG Jahrbuch, no. 24 (2017): 151–62; Lukić and Brekalo, “Oblikovanje jezičnog i nacionalnog identiteta grada Osijeka nakon ‘prevrata’ 1918. godine” [The formation of the linguistic and national identity of the city of Osijek after “The Overturn” in 1918], Godišnjak Njemačke narodnosne zajednice, VDG Jahrbuch, no. 23 (2016): 29–38; Miljenko Brekalo, Zlata Živaković-Kerže, and Anamarija Lukić, “Etnički identitet Osijeka u povijesnom tijeku (kretanje naroda, kultura i jezika)” [The ethnic identity of

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The German-speaking population of Osijek of the later interwar period was investigated by Carl Bethke.6 2

Osijek: on the Meaning of German in the Urban Society of a Multilingual Habsburg City

Osijek was the second-largest city in the Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia.7 Located in the eastern part of Croatia proper, on the right bank of the Drava River, it was the “Slavonian capital”—a centre of industry, crafts, and commerce, as well as educational, cultural, and social life. In 1900 German was the mother tongue of a majority of the local population. Knowledge of German could mean an advantage in trade and business activities—often directed across the Drava towards Hungary and further northwards—and it still was dominant in certain public spheres of the city, i.e. in its lively press and theatrical culture, which was based on performances of itinerant German theatre troupes that formed Osijek’s theatrical season.8 The population of Osijek was comprised of a colourful ethnic (and denominational) mixture, as is reflected in the population censuses from 1880 until 1910 (see Table 1).

Osijek in its historical course (the movement of nations, cultures, languages)], Identiteti— Kulture—Jezici [Identities—Cultures—Languages] (2016): 319–30. 6  Carl Bethke, Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten in Kroatien und der Vojvodina 1918–1941: Identitätsentwürfe und ethnopolitische Mobilisierung (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009); Bethke, (K)eine gemeinsame Sprache? Aspekte deutsch-jüdischer Beziehungsgeschichte in Slawonien. Vom Zusammenleben zum Holocaust, 1900–1945 (Münster: Lit-Verlag, 2013). 7  Even though Dalmatia became in 1867 administratively a part of Cisleithania, the emperor had referred in the Hungarian-Croatian Compromise of 1868 to the “Kingdom of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia.” The official name until 1918 became “Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia.” 8  The intensive in-migration of different groups of Germans to Osijek and their permanent settling began after the city was captured from the Ottomans (1687). “The population from surrounding places started arriving into the liberated city, and settlers from the German and Austrian provinces came along with the imperial army. In relation to Croatian inhabitants, the settlers have become the leading force in the city’s public and economic life and will retain that position for many years.” Ive Mažuran, “Osijek prvih godina nakon osmanske vladavine” [Osijek in the first years after the Ottoman Rule], in Od turskog do suvremenog Osijeka, 3–4.

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Language Transition in the Town of Osijek Table 1

The city of Osijek, population according to mother tongue

Census year/ mother tongue

Croatian

Serbian

German

Hungarian

Other

Total

1880

5,827 32.02% 5,516 27.89% 6,458 28.06% 11,169 39.18%

1,655 9.09% 1,602 8.1% 1,698 7.38% 2,258 7.92%

8,970 49.28% 10,657 53.88% 12,039 52.3% 10,778 37.81%

1,152 6.33% 1,378 6.69% 2,212 9.61% 3,537 12.41%

597 3.28% 625 3.16% 611 2.65% 763 2.68%

18,201

1890 1900 1910

19,778 23,018 28,505

Source: Agneza Szabo, “Socijalni sastav stanovništva” [The social structure of population], in Od turskog do suvremenog Osijeka, 155–62, here 158; Carl Bethke, (K)eine gemeinsame Sprache?, 74: Nowhere was the percentage of people with Croatian mother tongue, who knew no foreign language at all, lower than in Osijek: 29%, while it was 91.8% in Croatia-Slavonia. The Germanspeaking population of Osijek was largely bilingual, in 1910 65% of them had knowledge of Croatian and nearly 25% also Hungarian. Of course, these figures are far beyond the rates of secondary education, from which we can surmise that these “foreign languages” were hardly learnt in school.

This ethnic diversity of the population of Osijek was many centuries old, and the town’s self-image and collective memory have always included certain elements of multi-ethnicity and multi-confessionalism. When it was a language of everyday communication in Osijek, the spoken German gradually transformed into a distinct local Esseker9 dialect, combining the diversity of its Swabian, Austrian, and Yiddish roots, as well as contacts with other languages spoken in Osijek, especially Croatian and Hungarian.10 In spite of this mixture, it was easier for the inhabitants of Osijek to label the Esseker dialect simply “German.” For outsiders, Osijek was perceived as “always something special”11 among Croatian towns because of its heritage, which, in an era of nationalism, 9  Esseker, adjective of Esseg(g). The first time the name of the city of Osijek was mentioned in writing was the Hungarian variant Eszek (1196, the Croatian-Hungarian king Emeric letter confirming the Cistercian Abbey of Cikador’s right to collect the Osijek revenue, trade and ferry tax). The German name Esseg(g) follows after the Hungarian. Both versions were used in official and private communication. 10  For features of the Esseker dialect, see Velimir Petrović, “Esekerski—što je to?,” 107–122. 11  The Croats from other Croatian towns, especially Zagreb, had pejorative names for Osijek such as “German nest” or “Frankfurt an der Drau,” see “Gdje je spomen u temeljnom

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increasingly appeared as something foreign and non-Croatian. As if to “excuse” the use of German language—even after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, when it was less prestigious—authors ascribed to the Osijekers an inert “mentality,” averse to change, and enclosed in the local patriotism: they “do not trust any implemented action, either political or cultural.”12 Allegedly a typical native inhabitant of Osijek was “conservative from head to toe. He hates novelties and is totally suspicious … he does not perceive nationalities. He has no life outside Osijek … He does not understand that he could be a Croat. He is a Slavoniter or Šlavonac [Slavonian]. The Croats are somewhere around Zagreb.”13 This “mentality” of Osijekers and their indifferent attitude towards the question of nationality was also described by other witnesses, for example, Vilma Vukelić: “Croats, Serbs, Germans, and Jews sat there from day to day in harmony and community. There wasn’t any racial prejudice or national intolerance: they were all Esseker, irremediable local patriots, who were not interested in anything beyond their town.” According to this source they kamenu novoga Osijeka?” [Where is the memorial in the foundation stone of the new Osijek?], Hrvatski list (Osijek), 133 (1839): 13 June 1926, 4. 12  State Archives in Osijek (DAOS), fond 485, R.F. Magjer, box 5, Bratoljub Šram, Štipanja i milovanja, [Pinches and caresses], Klub hrvatskih književnika u Osijeku, Osijek, 1920., 91–2. Other authors from Osijek also complain about the inert mentality of Osijekers, mockingly called essekerstvo (essekerism), i.e. complaining of the absence of political life: “Naše gradjanske stranke medjutim i dalje spavaju snom mrtvijem. One se ne miču, ne rade ništa, njima je i na očigled svega što se oko njih dogadja s v e s v e j e d n o ! Essekerstvo je prešlo i na Hrvate i na Srbe u Osijeku” [Our political parties, however, sound sleep. They do not move, do nothing, considering everything that happens in sight of them, they still take it lightly. Essekerism infected as Croats as Serbs in Osijek]. “Na posao!” [Take up!], Zora (Osijek), 15 January 1919, 1. On urban planning as agreed upon by the city government: “Ako samo deseti dio svega toga u zbilji provedu, onda su jednim mahom izbrisali staru “essegersku” tradiciju: mnogo brbljati, a malo raditi” [if they carry out just a tenth part of it for real, they would in one movement erase the old “esseker” tradition: much talk and less action]. “Essegg ili Osijek” [Essegg or Osijek], Osječki reporter, no. 24, 31 July 1922, 1. On Osijekers as patriots who would let anyone rule, only to avoid any disturbance: “Glavno obilježje Essekera ležat će, čini mi se, u njihovu principu: Gospodo, najbolje mir! I po tom su oni principu burnih 48. godina dozvolili posadu Mađara, a poslije Hrvata, nek je svakom pravo, a manje krvavih gaća …” [The main characteristic of Essekers, it seems, would be in their principle: Gentlemen, it is best to be at peace! According to this principle, in troubled 1848 they tolerated the garrison of Hungarians, and the garrison of Croats that followed, let everyone carry the point, which meant less bloodshed …]. “Osječani” [Osijekers], Narodna obrana, no. 23, 28 January 1905, 1–2. 13  “Konzervativac od glave do pete. Mrzi novotarije i gleda ih s nepovjerenjem … ne poima narodnosti. Izvan Osijeka nema mu života … Ne shvaća kako bi mogao biti Hrvat. Ma on je “Slavoniter” ili “Šlavonac.” Hrvati su tamo negdje oko Zagreba,” State Archives in Osijek (DAOS), fond 485, R.F. Magjer, kut. 5, Bratoljub Šram, Štipanja i milovanja, Klub hrvatskih književnika u Osijeku, Osijek, 1920, 91–2.

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hesitated to adopt national ideologies, as they feared that this could mean a change in their usual life routines.14 In fact some Osijekers saw reason to add the traits of “mental comfort,” “inertia,” and “resistance to change” (which included linguistic aspects) to their self-image, which they referred to collectively as essekerstvo (esseker-ism).15 Some complained about essekerstvo, but rationalized it in terms of urban heritage, by claiming that “the spirit of Osijek” was not to rebel.16 Indeed, during the Illyrian revival in other parts of Croatia in the first half of the nineteenth century, the national consciousness in Osijek was hardly visible.17 It only emerged towards the end of Austro-Hungarian rule, when, in the course of urbanization, the in-migration of the Croatian population (especially from the surrounding counties of Virovitica and Srijem) increased—in spite of the low birth rate of Osijekers themselves—and the ethnolinguistic make-up of the city favoured Croatian speakers.18 Exactly in that decade between the population censuses of 1900 and 1910, the linguistic-cultural transition from German to Croatian occurred. This process of nationalization was in line with the political turn towards “the new course politics” during these years in Croatia;19 it was supported from the side of a significant local Serbian community and influences from the Serb-dominated city of Novi Sad which was in close proximity. But one should not neglect economic factors: with the growth 14  “Hrvati, Srbi, Švabe i Židovi sjedili su tamo iz dana u dan u slozi i zajedništvu. Nije bilo nikakvih rasnih predrasuda ni nacionalne netrpeljivosti: svi su oni bili Esekeri, nepopravljivi lokalpatrioti koje nije zanimalo ništa izvan njihova grada.” Vilma Vukelić, Tragovi prošlosti. Memoari [The traces of the past. Memoirs] (Zagreb: Nakladni zavod Matice hrvatske, 1994), 169–70. 15  Taken from the name of the town: Essék/Essegg/Osijek. 16  “Nedjeljni rovaš” [Sunday tally stick], Narodna obrana, no. 30, 21 December 1902, 2–3. 17  The Illyrian Revival (1835–1848) was a Croatian national movement that took its name from the belief that South Slavs descended from ancient Illyrian tribes of the Balkans. Vilma Vukelić mentioned in her memoirs the most distinguished representative of the Illyrian Revival from Osijek, bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, and his conception of the Yugoslav Idea—she described how Osijekers feared it because it meant an opposition to the government, a resistance, a disobedience, and a threat to their loyalty. Thus Osijekers endeavoured to keep a distance from the bishop so he could not “infect” the citizens with the spirit of rebellion. Vilma Vukelić, Tragovi prošlosti. Memoari, 181–5. 18  Szabo, “Socijalni sastav stanovništva,” 157. 19  “The new course” politics (or political programme) was created by a group of Croatian and Serbian politicians from Croatia and Dalmatia at the beginning of the twentieth century. The primary aim was to unite all Croatian lands and to improve their statehood position inside Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Its proponent was the Croatian-Serbian Coalition, which included the Croatian Folk Entrepreneurial Party, Croatian Party of Rights, and the Serbian Autonomous Party.

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of the number of Croats in Osijek, they had an increasing purchasing power, and the market was turning towards them. Promotional materials, such as billboards, invitations, flyers, cinema and theatre posters that once were bilingual (German-Croatian) began to appear exclusively in the Croatian language. Such a turn shaped the new standards of behaviour between sellers and buyers, by which Croatian became equal to German, and Croats started to insist upon on their right to use the Croatian language in business and private life, e.g. concerning issuing bills or going to a restaurant,20 since it was the official language.21 However, in commercial exchanges it was difficult to impose Croatian because there was sometimes not a suitable word in Croatian for a specific type of merchandise. Despite such difficulties, there was a dynamic process of language transition during this decade, and many German-speaking segments of the city’s population assimilated already before 1918. An even larger “Swabian” group, who lived somewhat apart from the rest of the city, in the district of Novi Grad, did not oppose the Croatian language or seek out German education for their children.22 3

Promotion, Affirmation, and Spread of Croatian in the Local Press and Theatre

After 1848, there was a proliferation of German-language journalism in Osijek. Osijek’s longest-running and most influential (daily) newspaper, Die Drau,23 was pro-Unionist,24 a stance that was especially evident during the 20  Narodna obrana noticed a lack of staff (waiters) who spoke Croatian, and who thus had to learn it while working. “Slavni konobari u kavani ‘Corzo’” [Famous waiters at the Corso Café], Narodna obrana, no. 52, 5 March 1903, 4. 21  According to the Croatian-Hungarian Compromise of 1868, Croatian was the official language in all offices inside the borders of Croatia and Slavonia. 22  “Nacionalistička borba u Osijeku” [Nationalist struggle in Osijek], Obzor (Zagreb), no. 128, 10 May 1914, 1. 23  Die Drau was for years (from 1868 when it was launched until Narodna obrana was founded in 1902) the leading Slavonian newspaper, which had the task of encouraging the readership’s loyalty to Hungary. It reached its peak during the governorship of Ban Khuen-Héderváry. Before the 1907 Croatian-Hungarian Settlement, it had appeared three times a week, after which it appeared daily. 24  The contents of the liberal paper Die Drau proves that Croat “Unionism” must not be simply be mixed with “Hungarian.” Vlado Obad claims that the paper avoided exposing itself in favour of Magyarization; in fact it displayed to its German-speaking readers open Croatian patriotism. On this see extensively Valdo Obad, Roda Roda und die deutschsprachige Literatur aus Slawonien (Vienna: Böhlau, 1992), 38–42.

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governorship of Károly Khuen-Héderváry (1883–1903). The Slavonische Presse, a journal that was published in Osijek since 1893, was more Croatian25 in character even though it was published in the German language. Certainly, the daily press in Osijek helped to keep alive the German language and cultural atmosphere.26 The official language was solely Croatian.27 The Croatian movement supporters gathering at the Croatian Writers’ Club in Osijek considered that two German dailies versus just one Croatian daily were an obstacle to the nationalization process, as language was the best indicator of whose culture is dominant in an area.28 Also in order to create stronger resistance towards the Magyarisation policies that Hungary promoted in Croatia, these activists attempted to strengthen Croatian national consciousness, especially by means of the Croatian language politics. To insert Croatian into the everyday practices of social life of the city, a Croatian-language newspaper with a large subscription base seemed necessary to them: from 16 November 1902, the newspaper Narodna obrana (National Defence) was published with a circulation of some five thousand copies. The newspaper took on the mission of advancing

25  Marina Vinaj, Povijest osječkih novina 1848.–1945. [The history of Osijek newspapers, 1848– 1945] (Osijek: Muzej Slavonije Osijek, 1998), 22. 26  Bogdan Mesinger, Esekerski kulturni underground u sumraku jedne civilizacije” [The Esseker cultural underground at the eclipse of one civilization], in Književni Osijek. Književnost u Osijeku i o Osijeku od početka do danas [Osijek in writing. Literature in Osijek and about Osijek from the beginning till today] (Osijek: Pedagoški fakultet, 1996), 95–106, 95–98; cf. Siniša Bjedov, Grad, Klub i Mi. Klub hrvatskih književnika u Osijeku 1909.–1941. [The City, the club and MI. Croatian Writers’ Club in Osijek, 1901–1941] (Osijek: Oksimoron, 2016), 25–8. 27  There were some conflicts with Hungary regarding the application of the Croatian official language, i.e. on the use of languages in railways in Croatia. See Mato Artuković, “Biskup Strossmayer i pitanje jezika u školama ‘Mađarskih kralj. državnih željeznica’ u Hrvatskoj” [Bishop Strossmayer and the Language Issue in the Schools of Hungarian Royal and State Railways in Croatia], Croatica Christiana periodica 34, no. 66 (2010): 153–69, here 154. The Hungarian Royal and State Railways, a “private, state-owned enterprise,” was to use Hungarian as the official language (according to the order of the Minister of Transport in 1888) even in the territory of Croatia. That order directly violated the provisions of the Croatian-Hungarian Compromise. The use of the Hungarian language was soon expanded to postal traffic and cash flow and to railway schools. 28  “Spectator” [Rudolfo Franjin Magjer], Osiek i hrvatstvo [Osijek and Croatianhood] (Osijek: Klub hrvatskih književnika u Osieku, 1913), 10; cf. Siniša Bjedov, Grad, Klub i Mi. Klub hrvatskih književnika u Osijeku 1909.–1941, 27.

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Croatian national consciousness.29 It soon had a major impact on public opinion in Osijek, also inculcating higher linguistic standards of Croatian.30 Narodna obrana, and later some other newspapers in Osijek that emerged after the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (Hrvatski list, Osječki reporter), reflected regularly on the language situation in the city and scrutinized the verbal communication of Osijekers: obviously polyglossia remained an integral part of the life of most of the population, and it was claimed that Osijekers (regardless of their ethnicity) privately preferred the German language, raised as they were with its cadence.31 The same citizens were attending Croatian schools, so they understood Croatian, but many it seems were more articulate in German.32 The entry of Croatian into wider arrays of the cultural life through the press was only one step in the process of the enforcement of the Croatian language as the dominant one. The next important goal was to “Croatize” social life, preferably the theatre, due to its popularity: nationalists sought to ensure that cultural programmes appeared in Croatian, as Osijek’s theatre had traditionally booked itinerant German troupes. They had built up a solid audience in the town that had shaped the local theatrical taste—which was for opera and operetta. German performances were so native in Osijek, that it was for a long time probably hardly imaginable to end this tradition in favour of a Croatian theatre with performances in Croatian throughout the season.33 However, this changed at the end of 1907: already from 1861 until 1907 Osijekers succeeded in hosting, in addition to German troupes, actors from Zagreb and Novi Sad. Their performances in Croatian and Serbian contributed to the manifestation of national consciousness among Osijekers, and by 1904, the long-common procedure of distributing Osijek’s theatre season entirely to German troupes

29  Maja Glušac, “Jezična obilježja osječke Narodne Obrane” [Language characteristics of Osijek’s Narodna Obrana], in Jezik medija nekada i sada. Zbornik radova sa znanstvenoga skupa održanoga 6. i 7. lipnja 2014. godine na Filozofskom fakultetu u Osijeku [Language of media then and now, proceedings of papers from the scientific conference held on 6–7 June 2014 at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Studies in Osijek], ed. Vlasta Rišner (Zagreb; Osijek: Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada; Filozofski fakultet u Osijeku, 2016), 24. 30  Ibid., 28. 31  “Uzkrsni rovaš” [Easter tally stick], Narodna obrana, no. 84, 12 April 1903, 1–3. 32  “Šalabazanje po Osieku” [Rambling across Osijek], Narodna obrana, no. 203, 2 September 1905, 3. The author compares Hungarian and Croatian pupils after school hours: Hungarian children speak Hungarian, and Croatian children speak German. 33  Dragan Mucić, Prvih četrdeset godina. Hrvatsko narodno kazalište u Osijeku 1907–1941 [The first forty years, Croatian National Theatre in Osijek] (Osijek: Matica hrvatska Ogranak Osijek, Filozofski fakultet u Osijeku, 2010), 23.

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became increasingly disputed. This was partially attributable to the unsatisfactory quality of German-language performances, but also the assimilation of numerous Osijekers of non-Slavic origin, who declared their belonging to the Slavic (mostly Croatian) “national body”—even though this was not necessarily connected to language preferences in other fields of social life, for it was said that some “Osijek patriots” who favoured the 1907 founding of a permanent Croatian theatre could not even speak Croatian at all.34 But there were of course more of those who, despite their origins, considered themselves Croats and spoke the Croatian language just as well as German and Hungarian, even though they used the latter languages in private life, when nobody considered it to be objectionable.35 It was on 6 July 1907 that the first permanent theatre in Osijek was founded as the “Croatian National Theatre.” The acting troupe consisted of Croats, Serbs, and other Slavs, and the opera ensemble consisted of artists from Prague—quality singers who were hard to find at home. Despite the nationalist motivations, an easy qualification seems difficult: The theatre repertoire of the first season of the Osijek Croatian National Theatre featured many works of local and Slavic playwrights, as well of authors from around the world.36 Performances of this new theatre, in which ambition and patriotic enthusiasm were connected, were exceptionally well received by the audience, although one part of it—the older spectators—were not pleased with the change. The reason for their discontent was not only the change of the language: the audience in Osijek was accustomed to operettas and comedies, which were the most popular performances, and the new permanent theatre sought to orient them instead towards its new quality repertoire.37 Although 34  Among those who met on 23 April 1907 to address this question in the Royal Hotel was Dragutin Šaj, who learned Croatian immediately before the First World War when his alleged patriotism was a boon for his political headway. Among the first call of members of the Croatian National Theatre was the Osijek factory owner Emil Plazzeriano, who after the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes had not yet learned Croatian, although he became a city councillor. 35  I would like to point out the examples of Vjekoslav Hengl, Aurel Frank and Viktor Frank, who were among the first treasurers of the Croatian Theatre Society in Osijek, but who spoke German or Hungarian in their private lives. 36  For details about the early activities of the Croatian National Theatre in Osijek, see Mucić, Prvih četrdeset godina, 51–92. 37  The Osijek audience preferred theatrical pieces that were entertaining like “crude comedy, grimacing and acting in a silly manner”. Theatre critics considered that an educated audience would not to look upon a theatre as if its purpose was only to provide laughter and recreation. The higher quality repertoire that was offered consisted mostly of dramas and theatrical pieces that reflected on deeper issues and moral values. Alen Biskupović, Dramska kazališna kritika u osječkim dnevnim glasilima od 1902. do 1945. Doktorska

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the theatre in Osijek was founded as Croatian, it became successful less because of a patriotic surge, and more so because it was the first permanent local theatre in Osijek. 4

The Process of Language Transition in “Narodna obrana” and Other Writings

In the works of authors like Vlado Obad, who wrote about civic culture at the beginning of the twentieth century,38 or Dragan Mucić, who depicted the beginnings of the Croatian National Theatre as a difficult fight of Croats with the German theatre in Osijek,39 it seems as though the creation of a Croatian theatre entailed a “revolutionary process.” These authors emphasized the negative aspects of the life of Croats in a German-dominated environment, suggesting to the reader the impression that Croats lived in hostile surroundings. Observed from the distance of one century, it is important to explore how the participants experienced this process of language transition in Osijek—which could hardly be equated with the sometimes violent conflicts in Slovenian or Czech cities, not least as contemporary Croat nationalism was more directed against Hungary than “Germans”.40 The following is a brief look back on the comments and reflections in Narodna obrana, as well as in other texts, which describe various situations of using German, Croatian, and Hungarian languages in everyday life between 1902–1914, and give some insights to the complexity of the circumstances. The language question in Osijek was discussed in almost every issue of Narodna obrana. Significantly, even though this newspaper was in Croatian disertacija [Drama theatrical criticism in the Osijek daily newspapers from 1902 till 1945] (Phd diss., Osijek, Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište Josipa Jurja Strossmayera u Osijeku, 2014), 69–70, 77. 38  “Croatian population was reduced, discriminated against economically and culturally, [and] withheld from its basic civil and political rights. One of them was the right to their own language.” Vlado Obad, “Esekersko građanstvo u djelima Vilme Vukelić” [Esseker civic community in literary works of Vilma Vukelić], Književna revija. Časopis za književnost i kulturu, 43, no. 3 (2003): 101–122, here 102. 39  Dragan Mucić, Prvih četrdeset godina, 51–92. 40  Narodna obrana notes only one dispute over the use of Croatian instead of German, when in 1905 a general workers’ strike took place in Osijek. In a clash of workers and police, one worker was killed. Dr. Franjo Gottschalk, the city physician, was brought to the scene. As he examined the body, he was asking questions of workers who were standing there in the crowd. The workers were upset, and they started heckling him to talk in German. “Drzka preuzetnost” [Insolent Presumptuousness], Narodna obrana, no. 111, 12 May 1905, 2.

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and was published with the purpose of spreading Croatian national thought, readers could not understand certain parts of the paper unless they spoke (or at least read) German too: Narodna obrana published quotes from the German press, but did not try to translate them because it did not consider it necessary. With this practice the paper accepted that the language of many Osijekers was German,41 admitting that the Croats in Osijek use it as their own language.42 Controversies regarding the language of the signs that firms advertised their businesses to the local public inform us that many Croatian merchants used German orthography for the name of their companies, while, as it was said, in other cases “foreign immigrants” in Osijek had adapted Croatian orthography for their names.43 The newspaper scolds the first practice, and praises the second. It also mentions the performance of the Croatian singing society Lipa, which had in “a totally German celebration” enhanced the consecration of the Lower Town synagogue in Osijek,44 and the jubilee party of the Jewish ladies’ charity society (for several thousand Osijekers), which presented already most of its programme and written materials in Croatian.45 A prominent and even more political issue in the paper were Magyarization efforts, which according to Narodna obrana affected (and united) many Croatian- and German-speaking citizens, especially those who worked in the railways, where employees should communicate only in Hungarian.46 It also occurred that Hungarian officials insulted Croats on a national basis, against which these Croats fiercely retaliated—but using the German language.47 Most institutions in Osijek such as, for example, the Chamber of Commerce were probably not affected by Magyarization,48 while it could also happen that the township had problems with the rules of the Croatian language in shaping formal notices.49 In any case, Narodna obrana advocated a total linguistic 41  “Uzkrsni rovaš,” 1–3. 42  “Rovaš” [Tally stick], Narodna obrana, no. 107, 10 May 1903, 1–2. 43  “Tko ne poštiva hrvatski jezik” [Who does not respect Croatian language?], Narodna obrana, no. 16, 21 January 1903, 3. 44  “Hrvatsko pjevačko društvo ‘Lipa’ i osječka ‘Die Drau’” [The Croatian singing society “Lipa” and Die Drau of Osijek], Narodna obrana, no. 56, 10 March 1903, 3. 45  “Velika jubilarna zabava u Gradskom vrtu” [Great jubilee party in the city garden], Narodna obrana, no. 139, 16 June 1908, 3. 46  “Stražar—tumač” [Guard—Translator] Narodna obrana, no. 1, 1 January 1903, 4. 47  “Izaziv bahatog Madžara” [The challenge of an arrogant Hungarian], Narodna obrana, no. 105, 5 July 1908, 3. 48  “Osječka trg.-obrt. komora i hrvatski jezik” [Chamber of commerce and crafts and the Croatian language], Narodna obrana, no. 120, 27 May 1903, 3. 49  “Nezgode u gradu Osijeku (VIII.)” [Troubles in the city of Osijek (VIII)], Narodna obrana, no. 158, 14 July 1903, 3.

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and cultural change in the town of Osijek in favour of the spread of Croatian, starting from its visible characteristics such as street names, which were renamed after Croatian heroes, to the hidden, intimate ones: the journal even warned fiancés to stop talking to their betrothed in German and to start speaking Croatian so that this language would be imposed on the future family.50 In looking back at their history, Narodna obrana stated that in its first year of publication it had to deal with the state of the disuse of the Croatian language, as Croatian national consciousness in Osijek was still “awakening.”51 In later years, when it was firmly entrenched as a Croatian daily newspaper, it had to address this issue less, though it touched intensively on the question of theatre, especially the performances of Croatian or Serbian artists (whose visits were announced on its cover as the most important news)52 and the founding of the Croatian theatre. It was stated that Croatian performances had a far larger audience than the German ones; however, the newspaper admitted that some groups of citizens avoided them on purpose—some of whom were Germans,53 but others Croats.54 The language transition can also be followed in collections of theatre posters that are kept in the State Archives in Osijek.55 Around the turn of the twentieth century (1896–1902), when German theatre groups came to visit,56 the posters of Osijek’s theatre were written in German, while after 1904, posters appeared with a bilingual title for Osijek’s theatre and the title of the play was translated into Croatian, as well as bilingual listings for the times of the show and the price of tickets.57 After 1908 (probably since the beginning of the Croatian theatre season, which started in autumn 1907), the posters appear in Croatian, with the exception of those for visiting German

50  “Hrvatski jezik u obitelji” [Croatian language in a family], Narodna obrana, no. 38, 17 February 1903, 4. 51  “M. Gorkij: Malomještani” [M. Gorky: The Philistines], Narodna obrana, no. 102, 5 May 1908, 1–2. 52  “Hrvatsko kazalište u Osijeku” [The Croatian theatre in Osijek], Narodna obrana, no. 100, 2 May 1903, 1. 53  “Rovaš”, 1–2. 54  “Hrvatsko kazalište. Viktor Car-Emin: Zimsko sunce” [Croatian theatre. Viktor Car-Emin: Winter sun], Narodna obrana, no. 117, 23 May 1903, 1. 55   H R-DAOS-496 Theatrical Ads and Posters. 56   H R-DAOS-496 Theatrical Ads and Posters, Stumpf I legacy, Theater der königl. Freistadt Essegg 1896 … 1917, Kazališni plakati 1896, 1897, 1902. 57   H R-DAOS-496 Theatrical Ads and Posters, Stumpf I legacy, Theater der königl. Freistadt Essegg 1896 … 1917, Kazališni plakati 1904, 1905. When the theatre group from Pécs came to visit, the entire text of the posters announced their performance in two languages, Croatian and Hungarian. Kazališni plakati, 1907.

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theatre troupes, which are in German.58 Ads for the cinema (1916) were printed bilingually, in Croatian and German.59 Among the most active participants of the “Croatian movement” in Osijek was the Croatian Writers’ Club, whose authors contributed through their literary works to the spread of the Croatian language. One of them, Rudolfo Franjin Magjer,60 noted in 1913 that after a short period of equilibrium between the German and Croatian languages on bilingual inscriptions, Croatian finally started to assume a preeminent position, though the process was accompanied by many difficulties: large masses of people were accustomed to German, and Croatian was not necessary in the business world, because many of the employment opportunities were with German-speaking entrepreneurs. In 1913 Magjer opined that Osijek was still not a Croatian town, and that work had to be continued because other nations were not standing still, and that “they also [had] the right to fight for their own, but not at the expense of others.”61 Another retrospective account was given by Bratoljub Šram,62 an author and teacher. He emphasized the difference between his generation and the former generations of Osijekers, considering the older ones “inert,” by which he meant that they were totally obsessed with the Esseker mentality, incapable and not interested in changing anything, and satisfied with their lives as they were, slow, fully in routine, and not to be disturbed—comfortable.63 Šram considered his generation to be different (“we are smart and fast, thriving, national, decisive, and entrepreneurial”) and he called his cohort

58   H R-DAOS-496 Theatrical Ads and Posters, Stumpf I legacy, Theater der königl. Freistadt Essegg 1896 … 1917, Kazališni plakati 1908, 1913–1916; Collection Gilming, 1897–1912; Collection Gilming, Kazališni plakati 1911; 1912. 59   H R-DAOS-496 Theatrical Ads and Posters, Stumpf VIII legacy, Urania I Kino d.d., 1916. 60  Rudolfo Franjin Magjer [alias Spectator] (1884–1954), was a Croatian author and teacher. From 1909 he led the Club of Croatian Writers in Osijek, which was founded to support Croatian books and language. He was the initiator and the editor of the magazine Jeka od Osijeka [Echo from Osijek], and he published the yearbook Mi (We). His active career spanned from 1905 until 1934. He was a promoter of Croatian and Slavonian literature and culture. His legacy is viewable at http://magjer.gskos.hr/ (accessed 12 October 2018). 61  “Spectator” [Rudolfo Franjin Magjer], Osiek i hrvatstvo, 10. 62  Bratoljub Šram, born in Osijek in 1877, was a Croatian teacher, author, and politician of German-Czech origin. He became an assimilated Croatian and advocate of Croatian national equality in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and later in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. 63  Narodna Obrana describes Osijekers as incapable of any patriotism except local patriotism, who consider Croat nationalism as something strange, almost hostile to their Slavonian patriotism. “Osječani” [Osijekers], Narodna obrana, no. 23, 28 January 1905, 1–2.

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“squirrels”64 who have moved the town of Osijek forward, towards a modern and national future. 5 Conclusion The city of Osijek, the second largest town in Croatia, entered the twentieth century as a bilingual and in many ways culturally German city. During the first decade of the twentieth century this situation changed. By then, the town was in the course of the urbanization process filling up with in-migrants, and at the same time more and more of Osijek’s local intellectuals joined the ranks of the Croatian national movement. They spread and popularized this cultural shift by launching the newspaper Narodna obrana (1902) and founding a Croatian national theatre (1907): Narodna obrana encouraged their fellow citizens to use the Croatian language in public and private life, and through the theatre, national activists strived to develop a feeling not only for Croatian, but also for “Slavic” culture. This happened approximately seventy years after the rise of the of the “Illyrian movement” in Zagreb. One reason for the delay was clearly the linguistic balance of the city’s population, which for years swayed towards the native German speakers. The “breakthrough” in the course of language transition in the years after 1903 coincided with the emergence of the “Croatian-Serbian coalition” (in fact a broad alliance of several parties) in Croatia, and its conflicts with the different wings of nationalist political forces in Hungary. The entrance of the Croatian language into the public and social life found little resistance in Osijek and other Croatian towns, and it was perceived as an aspect of modernization, at a time when a faster entrepreneurial way of life enabled individuals to change old traditions and routines.

64   D AOS, fond 485, R.F. Magjer, kut. 5, Bratoljub Šram, Štipanja i milovanja, Klub hrvatskih književnika u Osijeku, Osijek, 1920, 94.

Chapter 6

The Bosnische Post: A Newspaper in Sarajevo, 1884–1903 Carl Bethke The Bosnische Post was published during the Austro-Hungarian period in Sarajevo from 1884 to 1918, initially several times a week, and then daily starting in 1896. Its founders, editors, and probably readers included many people who did not speak German as a native language but used it as a lingua franca in a specific, immigration-related environment. In the following chapter, the history of the newspaper is described by using archival sources1 as well as its content, from its foundation until 1903. This time period roughly coincides with the terms of Minister of Finance Benjamin Kállay, responsible for administration in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Freiherr Johann von Appel, Governor (Landeschef ) of Bosnia and Hercegovina, and Hugo von Kutschera, civil administrator (Ziviladlatus). After 1903 Kallay’s successor István Burián tried to reorient tried to reorient the politics of his predecessor on Bosnia and Hercegovina. His “new course” had considerable consequences for the Bosnische Post.2 1

Languages and Immigrants

Bosnia and Hercegovina had once been the westernmost provinces of the Ottoman Empire. After the “Oriental crisis” and uprisings of Orthodox Christians and the independence of Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania, 1  The Bosnische Post is available at the Museum of Bosnia (Zemaljski muzej) in Sarajevo and at the Austrian National Library, albeit with gaps. Archival sources for this work were taken from the Foreign Ministry (Literarisches Büro, Haus-, Hof-, und Staaatsarchiv, Vienna), the Joint Ministry of Finance and the State Government (Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, ABiH, Sarajevo), and the German Consulate (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, PAAA, Berlin). The newspaper’s archive has not been preserved, meaning that their journalistic practice must be gleaned from other sources. 2  Carl Bethke, “Die Zeitungen ‘Die Bosnische Post’ und ‘Sarajevoer Tagblatt,’ 1903–1913,” in Die Deutschen in Bosnien und Herzegowina und Kroatien. Neue Forschungen und Perspektiven = Nijemci u Bosni i Hercegovini i Hrvatskoj. Nova istraživanja i perspektive. Zbornik radova, ed. Carl Bethke, Husnija Kamberović, and Jasna Turkalj (Sarajevo: Institut za Istoriju, 2015), 137–74.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004407978_007

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Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Hercegovina in 1878 under the terms of the treaty of Berlin. Before, the official language of administration in these provinces had been Ottoman Turkish (written in Arabic characters), with Arabic in use as the language of Islam. Through these avenues there was a Persian literary and cultural influence as well.3 In fact, when the Austro-Hungarian census of 1910 inquired about knowledge of “learned languages,” Turkish was still the second most widespread language (2,289 speakers) after German (5,648), while Arabic (448) was fourth and Italian, third (591). In Sarajevo alone, Arabic was in third place.4 For the Muslims under Austro-Hungarian rule, Arabic remained an indispensable part of religion with great symbolic significance; however, Austro-Hungarian officials considered the quality of the Arabic instruction offered to be largely poor,5 and in 1911 they came to the conclusion that it was only the hodžas (preachers) who actually knew Arabic.6 During the occupation, the internal administrative language became German, while the language of communication with the public became Bosnian for the period examined here. Cyrillic characters were officially recognized in 1880 as well.7 The “language question” in Habsburg Bosnia and Hercegovina has been researched in depth in several works by the historian Dževad Južbašić,8 and recently from

3  Robin Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism: The Habsburg “Civilizing Mission” in Bosnia 1878–1914 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Pr., 2007), 4; Smail Balić, Kultura Bošnjaka. Muslimanska komponenta [Culture of the Bosniaks. The Muslim component.] (Vienna, 1973). For valuable insights into Sarajevo in the first half of the nineteenth century, see the notes of the Sarajevo judge Mustafa Muhibbija (1786–1854): Svijet Mustafe Muhibbija, sarajevskoga kadije [The world of Mustafa Muhibbija, Kadi from Sarajevo], ed. Tatjana Paić-Vukić (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2007). 4  Die Ergebnisse der Volkszählung in Bosnien und der Hercegovina vom 10. Oktober 1910, Zusammengestellt. vom Statist. Departament d. Landesregierung (Sarajevo: Landesregierung für Bosnien u. d. Hercegovina, 1912), 54–5. 5  Landesregierung beantragt Drucklegung eines mohamedanischen Kathechismus in arabischer und in Latein-Schrift in bosnischer Sprache, 5. Jänner 1900 ABiH ZMF Pr. 31-1900; Bericht der Landesregierung für Bosnien und die Hercegovina vom 5. Juli 1900 betreffend Organisierung des islamitischen Religionsunterrichtes ABiH ZMF Pr. Nr. 593 res.-1900. 6  Landesregierung für Bosnien und die Herzegowina: Arabische Schrift Verwendung in der Landessprache. Sarajevo, am 9. Dezember 1911 ABIH ZVS Pr. 1688-1911. 7  Auszug aus einem Berichte der Landesregierung in Sarajevo vom 27. November 1879, Nr. 26491, betreffend den Unterricht mit Gebrauch der cyrillischen Lettern ALEX Historische Rechts-und Gesetzestexte Online, Austrian National Library, http://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi -content/alex?aid=lbh&datum=1878&size=45&page=333 (accessed 20 October 2018). 8  Dževad Juzbašić, Nacionalno-politički odnosi u Bosanskohercegovačkom saboru i jezičko pitanje (1910–1914) [National-political relations in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian diet and the language question] (Sarajevo: Akad. Nauka, 1999); Juzbašić, “Jezička politika austrougarske uprave i nacionalni odnosi u Bosni i Hercegovini” [Language politics of the Austro-Hungarian administration and national relations in Bosnia and Hercegovina.], in Politika i privreda

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a sociolinguistic perspective by Nedad Memić.9 However in the contemporary press language became a highly disputed political issue only after the relaxation of censorship in 1907, and especially after the election of the first BosnianHercegovinian diet in 1910. German remained the official language for internal use of the administration until 1918, not least because the rival national movements of the South Slavs could not agree either on a name and standards for the language, or on the future use of the Arabic alphabet. Južbašić and other authors have described these conflicts mostly through the lens of the South Slav national movements on the one side and Habsburg administration on the other; the perspective and views appearing in the articles of the Bosnische Post during this later period (1903–1914) were examined recently.10 The launch of the Bosnische Post was prompted by the fact that after the Austro-Hungarian occupation in 1878, several major groups of immigrants arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina: these included “colonists” (farmers) in rural areas, and, in urban areas, soldiers, merchants, skilled workers, and civil servants. The latter used German for internal communication, but knowledge of a Slavic language was a necessary qualification for being hired. As a result, an urban immigrant milieu emerged in which South Slavs, probably mostly Croats, appeared to be the largest group, but also included Germans as well as Czechs, Slovenes, and others. According to the census of 1910 a total of 114, 591 people of non-domestic origin lived in Bosnia and Hercegovina, and immigrants constituted 35.33 per cent of the population of Sarajevo. Even though—or because—most of these immigrants came from many different parts of the empire, it was the German language which became a widespread medium of communication among the civil servants but in other social contexts too, like industry, science, among military officers, in certain schools, and also within the Ashkenazi Jewish community.11   u Bosni i Hercegovini pod austrougarskom upravom [Politics and economy in Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austro-Hungarian administration] (Sarajevo: Akad. Nauka i Umjetnosti BiH, 2002), 382–42; Juzbašić, “Die Sprachenpolitik der österreichischungarischen Verwaltung und die nationalen Verhältnisse in Bosnien-Herzegowina, 1878– 1918,” Südost-Forschungen, 61/62 (2002/2003): 237–72. 9   Nedad Memić, “Sprachkontaktphänomene in deutschsprachigen Zeitungen in Bosnien-Herzegowina zur österreichisch-ungarischen Zeit,” in Deutsch in Mittel-, Ost- und Südosteuropa, ed. Hannes Philipp and Andrea Ströbel (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2017), 110–19; Memić, “Wörtermigration. Zur Entwicklung des administrativen Wortschatzes in Bosnien-Herzegowina zur Zeit Österreich-Ungarns,” in Migrationen im späten Habsburger-Imperium, ed. Carl Bethke (Tübingen: TDV, forthcoming). 10  Bethke, “Die Zeitungen ‘Bosnische Post’ und ‘Sarajevoer Tagblatt,’ 1903–1913,” 154, 159, 166. 11  Die Ergebnisse der Volkszählung in Bosnien und der Hercegovina vom 10. Oktober 1910, xlviii–liv; Iljas Hadžibegović, “Migracije stanovništva u Bosni i Hercegovini 1878–1914”

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Research on the histories of various German-speaking groups in different parts of Central Europe is a well-established—and in the past also a controversial—subject in German historiography (and to a degree in the Austrian too). However, on closer examination, for many decades this research was often accomplished in quite a selective way, as it was largely focused on rural environments or small towns, preferably those with German majorities. The life of German-speaking communities and individuals in larger multicultural and multilingual cities was of less interest to many historians. This was presumably originally for ideological reasons, as significant segments of these urban populations were indifferent to their national identity or simply felt non-German, and had in common only the fact that they were (still) speaking German. As a result, some of the major newspapers from such German-speaking, but not necessarily “German,” urban environments of the Dual Monarchy, have been researched only superficially, or not at all. The Bosnische Post, investigated here, is one example; in the following its analysis is at some points supplemented with the views presented in the Muslim newspaper Bošnjak, which began to appear in 1893 by using Latin characters and the Bosnian language.12 2

Bosnia and Hercegovina in the Age of Kállay, Appel, and Kutschera (1882–1903)

In addition to the conditions and restrictions of the Austro-Hungarian mandate in Bosnia and Hercegovina, imposed by the treaties of Berlin in 1878 and Istanbul in 1879, it soon became apparent that the Austro-Hungarian administration was also politically dependent on the cooperation with the local elites—especially the dominant Muslim group, in the face of the ongoing challenges posed by Serbia and Montenegro. In particular, the introduction of compulsory military service in 1881 could not be enforced until a Serbian-led uprising had been quashed in 1882; this was accomplished also thanks to the political assistance of Bosnian and Hercegovinian notables such as Mehmed Beg Kapetanović, who contributed to prevent the formation of a Serb-Muslim alliance.13 [Migration of the population in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1878–1914], Prilozi, nos. 11–12 (1975): 310–17; Južbašić, “Sprachenpolitik,” 237–8; Bethke, “Die Zeitungen ‘Bosnische Post’ und ‘Sarajevoer Tagblatt,’ 1903–1913,” 139. 12  Carl Bethke and Enes Omerović, “Predgovor = Vorwort,” in Die Deutschen in Bosnien und Herzegowina und Kroatien = Nijemci u Bosni i Hercegovini i Hrvatskoj, 9–33. 13   Präsidium des Bureau für die Angelegenheiten Bosniens und der Herzegowina: Landesregierung Sarajevo legt vor den Bericht des Reg. R. Mehmed Bey Kapetanovic über die Situation in der Herzegovina. ibid., 15–20 January 1882. ABiH ZMF Pr. 62-1882.

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In 1882, under the newly appointed Austro-Hungarian Minister of Finance, Benjamin von Kállay, who was responsible for the administration of Bosnia and Hercegovina until his death in 1903, the government developed a renewed programmatic basis for its policies. At this time the administration was spearheaded by Governor Johann Freiherr von Appel (born in Croatia), but the new strategy became particularly prominent thanks to Hugo von Kutschera, the civil administrator (Ziviladlatus) responsible from 1887 for internal affairs and cultural policy. It was aimed at the creation and development of Bosnian institutions and the promotion of Bosnian identity, and was also connected with a certain pro-Muslim sentiment. These policies had lasting effects on the image of the entire Austro-Hungarian period in Bosnia and Hercegovina, even though its “classic” period ended by 1903.14 Within this setting, it appears that political support for the foundation of newspapers and magazines was an important and highly visible instrument for the implementation of government strategies: one prominent example is Vatan, published in Ottoman language in 1884 for Muslim readers, the same year that the Bosnische Post was founded. The founding of publications such as these was also a response to the needs of a broadened readership seeking information and entertainment, at a time when the press was growing significantly in importance all over Europe. This made the production of print media a favoured entrepreneurial activity and a commercial interest as well. In particular, the founding of the Bosnische Post was soon accompanied by the commercial ambition of establishing a printing company.15 2.1 The Founding Father: Julije Makanec16 Although the Bosnische Post was published in German, the founder was actually of Croatian descent. Julije Makanec was married to Luise Löschner, who 14  Tomislav Kraljačić, Kalajev režim u Bosni i Hercegovini (1882–1903) [The Kallay regime in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1882–1903)] (Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1987); Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism. 15  Todor Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi u XIX veku [Bosnian-Herzegovinian newspapers in the nineteenth century] (Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1978), 162–80; Djordje Pejanović, Bibliografija štampe Bosne i Hercegovine 1850–1941 [Bibliography of the press of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1850–1941] (Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1961). 16  Writer Miljenko Jergović in his literary essay “Smrt u Džeddi” [Death in Djedda] (2015, http://kolumneinfo.blogspot.de/2015/11/smrt-u-dzedi.html [accessed 20 October 2018]) calls Makanec “the emblematic figure of the Sarajevo kuferaši”—Kuferaši was a Bosnian colloquial term of the time but is still today widely understood as mostly middle-class urban immigrants and civil servants of diverse ethnic origin (i.e,. “Dvije riječi Musavatu” [Two words on Musavat], Muslimanska Sloga, 20 January 1911; “Kuferaši na pomolu …” [Kuferaši at the pier], Zeman, 19 September 1912; with reference to non-German native speakers: “Uzor činovnik” [The role-model official], Musavat, 3 January 1908; “Kuferaška

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was probably a German speaker. Originally from Zagreb, he came to Sarajevo in 1879 as a 27-year-old physician and initially worked for the city authorities, taking on the function of a police doctor in 1881. At the end of 1883, Makanec applied to the Bosnian-Hercegovinian government for a licence to launch a German-language newspaper. The Ziviladlatus at that time, Fedor von Nikolić, expressed his doubts about profitability, but in a letter sent to the Ministry of Finance in Vienna, he made no further objections. Following the granting of the licence on 9 December 1883, the first issue of the Bosnische Post appeared on 3 January 1884. Makanec was the publisher and Eugen Ritter von Toepffer, the editor, who, like many of his successors to the position, came from Vienna. In May production was relocated from the state printing house to “Spindler und Löschner”, the newspaper’s own printing house, which was the first private printing company founded in Sarajevo under Austro-Hungarian rule.17 Technically well-equipped, it also offered printing services for address and business cards, menus, posters, and similar items.18 These commercial aspects soon proved to be essential for the financing of the newspaper. Makanec was close to leading members of the Austro-Hungarian governmental establishment as well. In 1884, in conjunction with top officials such as Konstantin Hörmann and representatives of the Bosnian elite like Mehmed Kapetanović, he initiated the Sarajevo Museum Association, which requested that, at first, the antiquities should be surrendered to the office of the Bosnische Post. That association was the founding platform for the later Landesmuseum (National Museum), which opened on 1 February 1888. Thus, in the initial phase, two nezahvalnost” [The Kuferaš’s unthankfulness.], Musavat, 20 March 1908). Similarly “Swabian” was used as a synonym for “Western” (i.e. vaccination as a “Swabian” innovation: “Protiv kolere” [Against cholera], Bošnjak, 6 October 1892). It seems that Kuferaši originates from a word game, likely from the German “Koffer” (suitcase), while the Arabic/ Islamic term Qufr means “unbeliever.” 17   Bethke, “Die Zeitungen ‘Bosnische Post’ und ‘Sarajevoer Tagblatt,’ 1903–1913,” 139; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 164–8; “Izvještaj Zemaljske vlade zajedničkom ministarstvu finansija u vezi sa zahtjevom koji je podnio Dr. Julije Makanec da u Sarajevu izdaje dva puta nedjelno na njemačkom jeziku političko-privredni li st pod naslovom ‘Bosnische Post.’ Sarajevo, 4. Dezember 1883” [Report of the government to the Common Minister on the plea of Dr. Julije Makanec to publish a paper under the title Bosnische Post], in Kultura i umjetnost u Bosni i Hercegovini pod Austrougarskom upravom [Culture and arts in Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austro-Hungarian administration], ed. Risto Besarović (Sarajevo: Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, 1968), no. 160. A certain E. Spindler had worked for the provincial printing house (Landesdruckerei), like his companion Josef Löschner, Makanec´s relative: see Hamdija Kreševljaković, Sarajevo za vrijeme austrougarske uprave 1878–1918 [Sarajevo in the time of Austro-Hungarian administration] (Sarajevo: Arhiv grada Sarajeva, 1969), 70. 18  “Die Buchdruckerei Spindler und Löschner in Sarajevo,” Bosnische Post, 22 March 1884.

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symbols of the Habsburgs—prestige projects and identity politics—were closely linked in the person of Makanec.19 In the first issue, the lead article defined a core aim of the newspaper as the familiarization of the “broader circles of the monarchy with the relationships, requirements, and achievements” of “New Austria,” and the strengthening of the “feeling of belonging.” In one of the next editions the paper spoke out against the emigration of “our Muslim brothers,” calling on Bosnia and Hercegovina to provide a “safe haven” for them and to ensure their continued existence and livelihood.20 Articles on the topic of immigration appeared already in the first three months, two of which warned of the unsuccessful private immigration of Germans. Another one painted a more ambiguous picture but dealt with a very specific case, explaining the settlement of “South Tyroleans”—Italians—in Konjik and Mahovljani (Banja Luka) in response to the effects of the devastating floods in South Tyrol during the autumn of 1882.21 The fact that the newspaper did not advocate a Croat agenda was soon noticed by Sriemski Hrvat, a newspaper based in Croatian Vukovar. The Bosnische Post responded to the paper’s criticism by saying “For Bosnia, for its schools, and for its development, only one point of view can be relevant—the Bosnian one.”22 From the end of 1884, the Bosnische Post received support from the AustroHungarian Foreign Ministry in the form of 100 subscriptions,23 and on 30 November 1884 the Finance Minister decided that half of the total associated costs would be covered by the Bosnian-Hercegovinian government.24 Obviously taking possible risks into account, the Bosnische Post underlined in a year-end review that “we are far from the development of a cultural or ethnic war in those areas where the complete absence of such wars has to date 19  “Otmar Reiser: Zur Vorgeschichte unseres Landesmuseums,” Bosnische Post, 21 September 1909. 20  “An unsere Leser,” Bosnische Post, 3 January 1884; “Sarajevo, 9. Februar,” Bosnische Post, 10 February 1884. 21  “Ansiedlung von Süd-Tirolern im Okkupationsgebiet,” Bosnische Post, 23 March 1884. 22  “Jadikovke iz Bosne” [Jeremiads from Bosnia], Sriemski Hrvat, 29 March 1884; “Sarajevo, 2. April,” Bosnische Post, 3 April 1884, the same article turned also against the depictions of Srbski List, Zadar. 23  K. u. k Ministerium des Aeusseren, Literarisches Bureau: Vortrag wegen Subventionierung des in Sarajevo erscheinenden politischen Tagesblattes “Bosnische Post.” Wien, 3.10.1884. Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv Wien. Literarisches Bureau, Presseleitung, Band 107: Bosnien (HHSA PL 107), 143/5 1884. 24  Der Minister: An Seine Exzellenz Herrn Benjamin von Kallay. Wien, den 21. Mai 1896 in: Präsidium des Bureau für die Angelegenheiten Bosniens und der Herzegowina: Ministerium d. Äußeren in Angelegenheit der Subvention der Bosnischen Post ABiH ZMF Pr. 497-1896.

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brought the greatest benefit, particularly for the Austrian imigrants, who have already suffered enough from the misery of the prevailing social conditions in our fatherland.” But the interest in the newspaper had been overestimated, and its transition from bi-weekly to daily failed. Civil servants and merchants were now defined as the main target audience. Despite its reputation as a government publication, it claimed to be objective; however, it pointed out the political remit of the press as: “the influence of the press over the opinions formed by individuals is fixed and undeniable.”25 3

Basic Structures and Core Issues Communicated

The Bosnische Post appeared on Thursdays and Sundays and was comprised of four to six pages. Its layout adopted the style of contemporary Viennese newspapers, and remained basically unchanged until 1918: the top half of the front page was dedicated to political issues, at first mostly in the form of a lead article or commentary, in 1896 largely giving way to brief news and headlines. The bottom half of the first page was reserved for feature articles, which often consisted of literary texts or other essays (including letters to the editor), usually by named authors, and eventually spanned a number of topics. In the first years these texts often dealt with regional topics, both informational and bel­ letristic. The second and third pages contained further “political reviews” (often international), daily reports, and local and regional news. Correspondents’ reports came in from Bosnia and Hercegovina, Zagreb, Vienna, and Budapest, in particular. Practical needs were addressed in the form of event guides and reviews of social and cultural events, a business section, official announcements, and information on laws and court rulings. Despite certain rearrangements in its political and commercial strategies, as well as changes in editorial staff, in terms of its content the newspaper retained a distinct canon of topics throughout its history. This included a certain “progressive” agenda, which manifested itself in the form of reports on the development of infrastructure, roads and railways, and industries. Aspects of urban development and town planning were also examined from that perspective, as were the expansion and practice of local self-governance. It showed identification with the country and its future, with agendas aimed at bringing about changes, rather than trafficking in stereotypes of Muslims. Moreover, the Bosnische Post generally avoided identifying with Germans as a group: this may have been a reflection 25  “Sarajevo, 31. Dezember,” Bosnische Post, 1 January 1885.

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of the multinational readership from all over the monarchy, be it migrants or those from outside Bosnia and Hercegovina. One special feature of the Bosnische Post, visible at first glance and significant in comparison to other Bosnian-Hercegovinian papers, was its extended advertisement section; in later years it expanded to sometimes more than half of the newspaper, often with lavish graphics and designs. This resulted in the newspaper becoming a proverbial window into the Viennese way of life as mail-order merchants from Austria and Vienna featured heavily, alongside some companies from Sarajevo (at first predominately those established by migrants). Moreover, at least some of the goods offered were explicitly luxury items, not available in Sarajevo, next to some items which were preferably ordered by mail due to their very intimate nature. The Bosnische Post, especially in this period, largely represented a selfimage of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a European state which got along well with its Muslim population; citing an article in Vatan, it was claimed in 1885 that their position in Bosnia and Hercegovina was more comfortable than under British and Russian rule or in the other Balkan countries. The article also reminded readers that opposition to the introduction of conscription laws had been less marked among Muslims than among Orthodox Christians, and cited examples of Muslims who had entered into army careers.26 It was Milena Mrazović, the later owner and editor-in-chief, who in her early years as a young staffer gave the newspaper’s feature pages a strongly Bosnian air with many regional essays, reports, and stories; articles on Bosnian-Hercegovinian history were also printed, for example in 1885 and 1888, by Josef Koetschet, a Swiss who had been active in the city since 1863, initially as an Ottoman city physician.27 These texts and articles were intended to build familiarity and 26  “Sarajevo, 17 January,” Bosnische Post, 18 January 1885, translated from Vatan, September 1884. 27  Some examples include Milena Mrazović, “Abia,” Bosnische Post, 13 March 1884; Mrazović, “Jusufs Aschyklik,” Bosnische Post, 18 May 1884; Mrazović, “Eine Ramzan-Reminiscenz,” Bosnische Post, 27 July 1884; Mrazović, “Die Feredža als Heiratsvermittlerin,” Bosnische Post, 21 August 1884; Mrazović, “Der Ahnherr der Ljubović,” Bosnische Post, 18 January 1885; Mrazović, “Ali der Derwisch,” Bosnische Post, 31 August 1899; on recent research on Milena Mrazović’s literary works, see Jozo Džambo, “Milena Preindlsberger-Mrazović—publicistkinja između tradicionalnog i modernog” [Milena Preindlsberger-Mrazović—a publicist between tradition and modernity], Bosna Franciscana 46 (2017): 9–54; Kristin Lindemann, “Explaining Bosnia—Milena Preindlsberger-Mrazovic and Austria’s own ‘Orient,’” in Europe and the Balkans: Decades of “Europeanization”?, ed. Tanja Zimmerman and Alexander Jakir (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2015), 161–70; Markus Koller, “Zeuge einer Zeitenwende—Der schweizer Arzt Josef Koetschet (1830–1898) über die ersten Jahre der österreichisch-ungarischen Herrschaft in Bosnien und der Herzegowina,”

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trust in the newly won homeland and its characteristics; nevertheless it is undisputable that these same literary representations of Muslims were not free of contemporary oriental clichés.28 However, the core of the Austro-Hungarian strategy was not to essentialize Muslims, but to cultivate differences between the Ottoman Empire on the one side and the Bosnian Muslims (“Bosniaks”) and Islam as a confession on the other. In line with this approach, the Bosnische Post promoted a Bosnian identity, language, and history, but had no interest in devoting a lot of space to Ottoman heritage and language. When Mehmet Beg Kapetanović emphasized the loyalty of Muslims to the Habsburgs in 1886, and formulated the basic features of a Bosniak patriotism that set itself apart from the Ottoman Empire, supportive articles by Muslim landowners appeared in the Bosnische Post. The series of articles was printed as a brochure.29 Other, particularly literary, texts were also translated and published in the paper or its other publications, thereby giving native authors a voice. This also included Bosnian-Hercegovinian Serbs, for example, in October 1887, Nike H. Besarović’s “Mula Meho,” which had first appeared in the literary paper Bosanska Vila in 1885, was printed by the Bosnische Post as well.30 4

Second Careers in Sarajevo: the Example of Eugen Ritter von Toepffer (1885–1889)

At the end of 1885, the Ban (governor) of Croatia-Slovenia, Károly KhuenHéderváry, complained to the Bosnian-Hercegovinian government about the representation of political conditions in Croatia by Makanec in the Bosnische Post. This might have been one reason why Makanec, whose brother was a member of parliament in Croatia, sold the newspaper in the summer of 1886 to its former editor, Eugen Ritter von Toepffer, to whom the government attributed

Südost-Forschungen 65/66 (2006/2007): 292–312; Urs Boschung, “Koetschet, Josef,” 23 August 2007, http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D46486.php (accessed 25 October 2018). 28  I.e. “Sarajevo, 12 März 1884,” Bosnische Post, 13 March 1884. 29   Mehmed Beg Kapetanović, Was denken Bosniens Mohamedaner? Eine Entgegnung vom Standpunkt des Islam auf die in Leipzig erschienene Brochure “Bosniens Gegenwart und nächste Zukunft” (Sarajevo: Bosnische Post 1886); Vladimir Ćorović, “Mehmed Beg Kapetanović (1911),” in Mehmed Beg Kapetanović Ljubušak, ed. Muhidin Džanko (Sarajevo: Dobra Knijga, 2008), 52–75. 30  “Književne i kulturne bilješke” [Literary and cultural notices], Bosanska vila, 16 October 1887; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 308.

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an “entirely correct attitude.”31 Makanec died in July 1891 in Jeddah while he accompanied as a doctor a pilgrimage of Bosnian Muslims to Mecca.32 Toepffer came from a well-respected Viennese family, and had originally come to Sarajevo as an actor and dramatist.33 However he had more success in managing the Bosnische Post, including the foundation of a printing company with the name “Bosnische Post,” which printed not only the newspaper but also around 140 monographs and 30 periodicals in both German and Bosnian.34 Significantly, Toepffer soon considered publication three times a week,35 as observers described the newspaper to be “excellently edited”36—for example, in 1888 the German Embassy sent its articles to Berlin to provide information about the visit of Crown Prince Rudolph to Bosnia and Hercegovina.37 That year the paper optimistically claimed that ten years ago everyone who had moved to Bosnia and Hercegovina had greatly regretted it, but that there was now a shift, citing the Slovenian Member of Parliament Karel Klun, who had said in the Austrian parliament (Reichsrat) that he would have been happy if as much investment were made in his home region. Alluding to the language tensions between Slovenes and Germans, the Bosnische Post commented that in Bosnia and Hercegovina no one went crazy because their children had to learn German in school. This episode shows that its editors may not have been free of national sentiments, but that these emotions were in general kept under control.38 31   Khuen-Héderváry: Benjamin Kállay de Nagy-Kálló, Wien. Agram, am 26. Dezember 1885, in: Präsidium des Bureaus für die Angelegenheiten Bosniens und der Herzegowina: Banus von Croatien betr. Haltung der bosnischen Post ABiH ZMF Pr 878–1885; Appel, ibid. 65Z1886, 13. August 1886. 32  “Mali Vjesnik” [Short news], Sarajevski List, 17 June 1891; “Dr. Julije Makanec,” Sarajevski List, 5 August 1891; “Mali Vjesnik,” Sarajevski List, 7 August 1891; “Dr. Julius Makanec,” Bosnische Post, 5 August 1891; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 164. 33  “Eugen Ritter von Toepffer,” Bosnische Post, 27 July 1889; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 169. 34  Amra Rešidbegović, “Pregled privatnih štamparija u Sarajevu” [Overview of private printing houses in Sarajevo], Bosniaca 6 (2017): 68–73. 35  “Izvještaj Zemaljske vlade zajedničkom ministarstvu finansija u vezi sa promjenom izdavača lista ‘Bosnische Post.’ Sarajevo, am 15.8. 1886” [Report of the government to the Common Minister of Finance on the change of the publisher of Bosnische Post], in Kultura i umjetnost, no. 169. 36  János Asbóth, Bosnien und die Hercegovina. Reisebilder und Studien (Vienna: Hölder, 1888), 480. 37  Bericht des kaiserlichen Konsuls von Oertzen über die Anwesenheit des Österreichischen Kronprinzenpaares. Sarajevo, den 22. Juni 1888 PAAA R 2291; “Das Kronprinzenpaar in Sarajevo,” Bosnische Post, 17 June 1888; “Zur Reise des Kronprinzenpaares,” Bosnische Post, 19 June 1888. 38  “Sarajevo, 4. Mai,” Bosnische Post, 5 May 1888; Karel Klun: born 1841, Prigoica—died 1896, Budapest.

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Sarajevo’s “Good Woman”: Milena Mrazović, German Author with Croatian Roots (1889–1896)

Toepffer died on 26 July 1899 and bequeathed the Bosnische Post to his much younger female assistant Milena Mrazović.39 According to the ÖsterreichischUngarische Buchdrucker Zeitung, he died a few days before being able to take Mrazović to the altar.40 Mrazović was born on 28 December 1863 in Vienna, the daughter of Andrija Mrazović, a civil servant originally from Bjelovar in Croatia, “from an old Croatian family of nobility,” while her mother’s maiden name was Bartel. In 1878 her father was sent to Banja Luka in Bosnia as the district secretary. Milena taught in a Catholic girl’s school in Sarajevo in 1884 and 1885.41 Milena Mrazović(-Preindlsberger) became one the most remarkable personalities in the history of the Bosnische Post, and one of the first women in such a position in Europe. She was a member of the Sarajevo Museum Association and in 1899, following Makanec, became the first female member of the Viennese Anthropological Society.42 The Landesregierung respected Toepffer’s last will and authorized the succession. This might speak for Mrazović’s well-known talent, although the transfer of a supposed semi-governmental paper to a 26-year-old woman could also indicate the limited importance attributed to the paper. The editor-in-chief’s position was initially slated for Alfons Kullich (1850–1914), a man with no journalistic experience. Worse, it seems that Kullich had fallen into disgrace during his military service before he became a clerk for a haulage company owned by the Viennese businessman Johann Baptist Schmarda.43 Governor Appel wrote to the Ministry on the 20th of August that Kullich’s employment in the country’s service “beforehand” could still not be taken into consideration, but that his employment as an editor was not to be objected to. In any case, Appel 39  “Mali vjesnik” [Short news], Sarajevski List, 19 July 1889; “Mali vjesnik,” Sarajevski List, 26 July 1889; “Mali vjesnik,” Sarajevski List, 31 July 1889; “Mali vjesnik,” Sarajevski List, 15 September 1889; “Mali vjesnik,” Sarajevski List, 26 February 1890; s. “Nachruf: Eugen Ritter von Toepffer,” Bosnische Post, 27 July 1889. 40  “Eugen Ritter v. Töpfer,” Österreichisch-Ungarische Buchdrucker-Zeitung, 15 August 1889. 41  Concerning her place of birth, various places are given in the literature. See Džambo, “Milena Preindlsberger-Mrazović,” 9–12; Mary Sparks, “The Good Woman of Sarajevo,” History Today 63, no. 12 (2013): 20–26; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 171. 42  Sparks, “The Good Woman of Sarajevo”; “Vorstand und Mitglieder der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien,” Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 36 (1906): [1]–[11], here [9]. 43  Kullich was born in Budapest and had studied in Prague. From 1894 he worked for the railways in Bosnia. He later became a member of the Association of Germans in Bosnia: “Alfons Kullich,” Tagespost, 23 May 1914.

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recommended that the ministry grant for the continuance of the paper under the condition that this approval could be terminated at any time without cause. The permission was issued from Vienna at the beginning of September.44 But Kullich’s time as editor of the Bosnische Post turned out to be one of the shortest, as he gave up his post six months later in February 1890 in order to open a riding school in Sarajevo.45 Kullich’s successor as acting editor-in-chief was Hermann Tausk, born in today’s Slovakia. He had worked for the Zagreb based Agramer Tagblatt and was the first experienced journalist to take over the position. Tausk was of Jewish origin and his son Victor would later become a well-known psychoanalyst.46 In 1891 Tausk quit his post, but returned to Sarajevo in 1892 and continued to work for the Bosnische Post. In the meantime, Adolf Flachs and Adolf Landau had been editors in charge, but by 1892, Mrazović finally appeared as “Editorin-Chief” on the masthead.47 The political mood in these years was increasingly nervous, among other reasons due to the rise of the Radical Party in Serbia, which was noticeable in polemics between the official Serbian newspaper, Bosanska Vila, also published with government support, and the Bosnische Post.48 In the opinion of the German Consul, the Bosnische Post, as well as the (Muslim) newspaper Bošnjak, showed loyalty towards the government but wrote “in too adulatory a manner”49 for his taste. According to a letter published in the Bošnjak, local Serbs saw both the Bošnjak and the Bosnische Post as their enemies.50 These circumstances made the symbolic affirmation of the alliance with the Bosniak 44  Appel, Der Chef der Landesregierung: Hohes Ministerium! Sarajevo, am 20. August 1889. Betr.: Concession B. Post an Milena Mrazović ABiH ZMF 625-1889; Kruševac, Bosanskohercegovački listovi, 171. 45  “Mali vjesnik,” Sarajevski List, 26 February 1890. 46  “Mali vjesnik,” Sarajevski List, 5 March 1890; with some reference to the family background: Paul Roazen, Brother Animal: The Story of Freud and Tausk (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publ., 1990), 8–9; Historical novel with reprinted press clips and biographical data on the Tausk family: Sibila Petlevski, Tabu 2 Bilo nam je tako lijepo [We felt so nice] (Zagreb: Fraktura, 2011). 47  “Mali vjesnik,” Sarajevski List, 8 March 1891; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 171. 48  “Odgovori uredništva,” Bosanska Vila, 15 March 1890; “Izjava,” Bosanska Vila, 30 July 1891; for Serbian nationalism esp. in the Bosanka vila 1890/91 see also Kraljačić, Kalajev režim, 186, 216, 222, 273; cf. Mustafa Imamović, Pravni položaj i unutrašnji politički razvitak BiH 1878–1914 [The juridical position and internal political development of Bosnia and Herzegovina] (Sarajevo: Bosanski Kulturni Centar, 1997), 107. 49  Von Oertzen: An seine Exzellenz den Reichskanzler, General der Infanterie, Herren Grafen von Caprivi, Berlin. Betrifft: Die politischen, administrativen und militärischen Begebenheiten des Vorjahres in Bosnien. Sarajevo, den 11. Februar 1892. PAAA R 12917. 50  “Naši dopisi” [Our letters], Bošnjak, 3 March 1892.

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elite important, for example on the occasion of the funeral of the deceased mayor Mustafa Fadil Pašić. However, in April 1893 the publisher of the Bošnjak, Kapetanović, succeeded Fadil Pašić and was himself replaced by Jusuf Beg Filipović.51 Until then the Bošnjak had often been an ally of the Bosnische Post, but in 1893 its pages levelled accusations against Mrazović due to a book she had just published in Berlin: Selam. Skizzen und Novellen aus dem bosnischen Volksleben. It contained eight of her reports from the commentary section in the Bosnische Post, which may have been inspired by day trips on horseback to the surrounding area with a friend. The Bošnjak felt that the book showed the Muslim population in a disgraceful light, as the author did not really know the lifestyle that she wanted to describe and so was unable to give it its due. The young woman had allegedly created characters in her fantasy world who may appear in western European novels, but not among the Bosnian people.52 It is quite possible that the aversions of the Bošnjak were directed against Mrazović personally. Certainly, Mrazović was a notably provocative personality for her time, for example taking part in a horse race.53 A little later, the Bosnische Post announced an organized tour at the Provincial Museum (Landesmuseum) for well-to-do Muslim women to remove “misgivings,” which might also indicate an episode of certain tensions had passed.54 On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Bosnische Post on 1 February 1894, the Bošnjak expressed congratulations with the words that it had been founded to counter all the false news that were spread in the world about the homeland. The paper was praised as being successful at this—and then it was emphasized how it was edited with great effort by Tausk (while not mentioning Mrazović).55 In September 1894 a new building for the paper’s offices and a printing plant designed by Mrazović were completed, near the new cathedral in Sarajevo’s city centre by including five large, luxurious apartments, one of which was for Mrazović herself.56 But just a short time later, a personal crisis arose between Mrazović and the ambitious Tausk, caused by the latter’s 51   “Mustafa Beg Fadil Pašić,” Bosnische Post, 8 December 1892; Kruševac, Bosanskohercegovački listovi, 256. 52  “Selam,” Bošnjak, 31 August 1893; “Književnost” [Literature], Sarajevski List, 21 July 1893; Džambo, “Milena Preindlsberger-Mrazović,” 23. 53  “Trka u Butmiru” [Race in Butmir], Bošnjak, 20 June 1895; “Konjska utrka u Butmiru” [Horse race in Butmir], Sarajevski List, 18 September 1893. 54  “Sarajevo, 10. Oktober,” Bosnische Post, 11 October 1893. 55  “Desetogodišnijca ‘Bosanska Pošta’” [Ten years of the Bosnische Post], Bošnjak, 1 February 1894; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 173; the Bošnjak sent “Bajram greetings” to Tausk, not to Mrazović; “Bajram,” Bošnjak, 21 June 1894. 56  Mary Sparks, The Development of Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo, 1878–1918: An Urban History (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 131; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 174.

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desire to travel to Croatia due to an eye illness, for which Mrazović refused consent. When Tausk travelled nonetheless, Mrazović fired him on the 15th of November. Tausk, who had eight children, then tried to gain government approval to start his own newspaper, proposing the title of Sarajevoer Tagblatt, while Mrazović tried to sell her paper to Schmarda. The government representative for Sarajevo, Lothar von Berks, supported her plan, but to Berks it seemed politically more important to use the property of the Bosnische Post to launch a government-friendly paper for the Serbian public.57 At the end of the year Tausk and Mrazović faced each other in court.58 Ultimately no new newspaper emerged from that conflict: Appel warned the Finance Ministry not to grant a concession for a new journal to another employee of the Bosnische Post, Gjuro Vrignanin, a Croat, as it had been discovered that Vrignanin, who was without resources, had links to the “pan-Slavic” Slovenian deputy Josip Vošnjak.59 Tausk’s plans were not (yet) implemented either: a newspaper called Sarajevoer Tagblatt was ultimately launched from 1907 as an alternative to the Bosnische Post, but not by Tausk. However, Tausk was able to establish himself in Bosnia professionally, at least for a time, as press officer for the government. He also worked as a translator.60 After a failure with the Sarajevo Wochenschrift, which appeared in 1908, in 1912 he founded another weekly, the Südslawische Revue. However, after a few months he suddenly left Sarajevo and returned to Zagreb. He died in 1916, and in the obituaries, Croatia was called his second home.61

57  “Vladin povjernik za zemaljski glavni grad Sarajevo Berks u privatnom pismu izlaze mišljenje o sukobu Milene Mrazović i Hermana Tauska, vlasnika i urednika lista “Bosnische Post,” i nekim drugim pitanjima u vezi sa pokretanjem i uređivanjem listova u Bosni i Hercegovini. Sarajevo, am 29. November 1894” [The government commissioner for Sarajevo, Berks, on the conflict between Milena Mrazović and some other questions concerning the editing and publishing of lists in Bosnia and Herzegovina], in Kultura i umjetnost, no. 177. 58  “Urednik i vlasnica novine,” Bošnjak, 3 January 1895; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 175. 59  “Izvještaj Zemaljske vlade Zajedničkom ministarstvu finansija u vezi sa zahtjevom dra Vladislava Nieča i Dure Vrignanina za koncesiju odnosno prenos koncesije za izdavanje lista ‘Bosnische Post.’ Sarajevo, am 28. März 1895” [Report of the government of the Common Minister of Finance concerning a concession to Vladislava Nieča and Duro Vrignanin to publish the newspaper Bosnische Post], in Kultura i umjetnost, no. 178; Bethke, “Die Zeitungen ‘Bosnische Post’ und ‘Sarajevoer Tagblatt,’ 1903–1913,” 141. 60  I.e. Antun Hangi, Die Moslims in Bosnien-Hercegovina, trans. Hermann Tausk (Sarajevo: Kajon, 1907). 61  Bethke, “Die Zeitungen ‘Bosnische Post’ und ‘Sarajevoer Tagblatt,’ 1903–1913,” 146–7; Pejanović, Bibliografija, 64–6, 82; Petlevski, Bilo nam je tako lijepo.

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The Perception of the Vakuf Conflict and the Emergence of Muslim Opposition

Coinciding with these internal difficulties and the government’s thoughts on the future of the newspaper, an even more serious political crisis began to emerge, whose consequences would determine developments in Bosnia and Hercegovina for years to come. While the opposition of the BosnianHercegovinian Serbs was more or less a given fact, and increasing since the early 1890s, the political alliance with the Muslim elite was for a long time supposed to be a core element of the political strategy of Governor Appel and Finance Minister Kállay; Ziviladlatus Kutschera even knew Ottoman. By the mid-1890s, however, an opposition movement started to emerge among Muslims as well. One precipitating factor was the placing of the assets of the Vakuf Muslim religious foundations under state control in 1894. Moreover, at the end of the same year a petition was received by the Sultan from the Bosnian-Hercegovinian émigrés in Istanbul with further complaints about the situation in their homelands.62 At the same time, the fears of the government concerning a rapprochement of the Serbian and Muslim oppositions seemed to become more realistic. On 9 January 1895, a letter from Mehmed Spahić of Mostar, the centre of the Muslim opposition, was published in the Bosnische Post, in which he warned against a “Serbian current” among the Muslims; after he himself had temporarily supported it, he now wanted to publicly distance himself from it.63 At that time, in the final phase of the Mrazović era, the Bosnische Post was still publishing articles which tried to actively communicate the policies of the government on these controversial issues. For example, at the general meeting of the Vakuf Commission on 11 February 1895 in Sarajevo, the “mearif” property (of the Ottoman school foundation) was placed under the control of the Commission. With regard to this highly sensitive issue, it was explained that the assets held by the foundation had grown to 300,000 crowns, thanks to the reorganized Vakuf administration; this was justified by the government’s 62  Sources: Borba muslimana Bosne i Hercegovine za vjersku i vakufsko-mearifsku autonomiju [The fight of the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina for Vakuf-Mearif autonomy], ed. Ferdo Hauptmann (Sarajevo: Arhiv SRBiH, 1967), 21, nos. 1–3 et al.; Kraljačić, Kalajev režim, 357–8; a classic analysis is Robert Donia, Islam Under the Double Eagle: The Muslims of Bosnia And Hercegovina, 1878–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); also dealing at core with the emergence of the oppositional movements: Martha M. Čupić-Amrein, Die Opposition gegen die Österreichisch-Ungarische Herrschaft in Bosnien-Hercegovina (1878–1914) (Bern: Lang, 1987), 90. 63  “Mostar: Erfahrung ist ein Schatz,” Bosnische Post, 9 January 1895; Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism, 132.

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desire to promote the Muslim school system.64 The latter was highlighted as a key benefit, and as a means of reducing Muslim emigration. As a practical step, the promotion of Muslim reading halls (Kiraethana) was encouraged65—however, the article did not mention the fact that in Mostar these Kiraethanas were under the influence of the opposition. Intrigues by Muslim émigrés were especially feared. The Bosnische Post sometimes relied on the Croatian press, for example on 24 May 1895, printing a notice from the Slawonische Presse (Osijek) about Muslim émigrés in Istanbul who were allegedly working towards an attack on Austria-Hungary from Serbia, Montenegro, and Russia.66 However, in this time we also read about gestures of goodwill by the government, like a women’s teferić (picnic) in Ilidža with noble Muslim ladies, wives of top officials (like Miss Kutschera), and Milena Mrazović.67 7

1896: The End of the Mrazović Era. The Sale of the Bosnische Post to Schmarda

While the government’s commissioner for Sarajevo, Berks, had labelled Mrazović during his above-mentioned dealings on the future of the Bosnische Post “hysterical,” the contemporary women’s movement considered her a role model, and she was written about in the magazine Die Frau published by Helene Lange in Berlin, and in a study on professional women published by the Verlag der Frauen (women’s publishing house).68 Her lectures may have contributed to that fame; as the Bošnjak reported in March 1896, in one lecture in Vienna, Mrazović painted a pretty picture of “our people” and brought attention to everything that is beautiful and good among them. The audience agreed emphatically.69 But at that time the Bosnische Post was already close to being sold. On 26 March 1896, a purchase request by Schmarda was forwarded to the Minister of Finance, who approved it. Appel added to the proposal that better editorial work could be expected from the new owner, and had been desired for

64  “Sarajevo, 11. Februar,” Bosnische Post, 11 February 1895. 65  “Sarajevo, 15. März,” Bosnische Post, 15 March 1895. 66  “Sarajevo, 24. Mai,” Bosnische Post, 24 May 1895. 67  “Teferić na Ilidži” [Teferić in Ilidža], Bošnjak, 8 August 1895. 68  Die Frau 3 (1895), 253; Eliza Ichenhäuser, Die Journalistik als Frauenberuf (Berlin: Verlag der Frauen—Rundschau, 1905), 33. 69  “Što u Beču govore o Bosni?” [What is said in Vienna about Bosnia?], Bošnjak, 5 March 1896.

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a long time.70 In her farewell editorial note in the Bosnische Post, Mrazović stated with an ironic undertone that she hoped her resignation would be advantageous for the company, since it was now in the hands of a man: “A woman’s ability, in public life, is and remains a restricted one.” A commentary piece somewhat evasively praised her “genuine Slavic tenacity,” and that the newspaper had been identified with her, but also tried to attribute “male” traits to her and speculated further on that.71 In November 1896 she married Josef Preindlsberger from Graz, who was working as an eye specialist at the Sarajevo Hospital. Heinrich Renner retrospectively judged in his monograph (Berlin 1897) that Mrazović had an excellent understanding of how to form texts and feature articles in an appealing manner.72 She continued to write monographs on Bosnian topics, including the Bosnian Skizzenbuch (Innsbruck 1900, Dresden 1909), travel literature (e.g. Die Bosnische Ostbahn) and novels, contributed to the prestigious volumes of Die Österreichische Monarchie in Wort und Bild (1901), and joined the Association of Women Writers and Artists in Vienna. In 1919 she left Sarajevo with her family and went to Vienna, where she lived in an apartment furnished in Bosnian style. She died on the 20th of January 1927.73 8

Franjo Selak (1894–1897): Transformation and “Self-Censorship.” The Bosanska Pošta

Franjo/Franz Selak (1847–1906) was an editor of the Bosnische Post from 15 November 1894 to November 1897, but became editor-in-chief only after Mrazović left. Having studied in Graz and Vienna, he was initially a grammar teacher, but had run into “political or moral difficulties.” He had then lived for 25 years in Zagreb as a translator and journalist for German-language

70  Appel, Der Chef der Landesregierung: Hohes Ministerium! Sarajevo, am 24. März 1896, in: Präsidium des Bureau für die Angelegenheiten Bosniens und der Herzegowina: Landesregierung BiH mit Gesuch des J.B. Schmarda um Concessions- Übertragung für die Druckerei u. Zeitung “Bosnische Post.” ABiH ZMF Pr. 297-1896. 71  Sparks, “The Good Woman”; “An die geehrten Leser!,” Bosnische Post, 6 May 1896. 72  Heinrich Renner, Durch Bosnien und die Hercegovina kreuz und quer (Berlin: Reimer, 1897), 55. 73  Džambo, “Milena Preindlsberger-Mrazović,” 12–15, occasionally she wrote even later for the Post: ibid., 12; Marianne Baumgartner, Der Verein der Schriftstellerinnen und Künstlerinnen in Wien (1885–1938) (Vienna: Böhlau, 2015), 374.

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newspapers from Zagreb and Prague. During his stay in Sarajevo he translated literary texts and wrote articles in Bosnian for the magazine Nada, launched in 1895.74 The new owner Schmarda had the ambition of transforming the Bosnische Post into a daily newspaper. While Kállay assured his support, the Foreign Ministry refused prematurely (21 May) to increase the level of financial support—due to the “low value” of the paper.75 The transition to a daily newspaper took place on 1 October 1896. Schmarda, however, preferred that his name appears as owner and publisher only from 3 November.76 The newspaper’s structure changed significantly, as the editorials that had commented on political and social developments in Bosnia and Hercegovina, just as in a diary, with the current date as their headline, appeared less and less. Instead, the front-page headlines were now mostly filled with agency reports, so-called telegrams. At the same time the advertisement section was expanded, which probably contributed to the financial sustainability. Whether the advertisements paid off commercially is difficult to estimate. Schmarda considered publishing the newspaper, despite losses, a “patriotic duty,”77 and it is possible that this may have influenced some advertisers as well. The Bosnische Post avoided more than ever discussing “unpleasant” or disputable or critical issues—a characteristic Schmarda would in 1899 call “selfcensorship.” This also applied to the rise of the Muslim opposition against Austro-Hungarian rule. The reader thus learned in 1898 that the wife of top official Konstantin von Hörmann headed a school for Muslim girls, where they were educated, among other things, in Bosnian by the “švabska gospođa” (German lady), obviously with the approval of their mothers. The report suggests that these girls came from the families of the elite (including the theological elite); however, it did not mention that there were also voices who were suspicious of intentions of conversion behind the teaching.78 74  9 9 strokovnjakov—bivših dijakov I. gimnazije v Celju [99 Experts—Former Pupils of the I Gymnasium in Cilije], ed. Urška Mirnik, Metka Oprčkal, and Janja Jelen (Celje: I. gimnazija, 2005), 64; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 175, 291. 75  Der Minister: An Seine Exzellenz Herrn Benjamin von Kallay. Wien, den 21. Mai 1896 in: Präsidium des Bureaus für die Angelegenheiten Bosniens und der Herzegowina: Ministerium d. Äußeren in Angelegenheit der Subvention der Bosnischen Post ABiH ZMF Pr. 497-1896. 76  Sparks, Development, 112–15, 152; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 171–2. 77  Joh. Bap. Schmarda an Hohes k. und k. gemeinsames Ministerium des kaiserlich und des königlichen Hauses und des Äußeren, Wien, 27.6.1904. HHSA PL 107 362/1904. 78  “Schlussprüfung an der türkischen Mädchenschule,” Bosnische Post, 15 July 1896; for dissenting voices see Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism, 101.

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From 15 November 1896 to the end of 1898, Schmarda published a sister newspaper, the Bosanska Pošta. Despite its name, it was founded as a Croatian paper, and according to Todor Kruševac, it was also perceived and treated as a Croatian variant of the Bosnische Post among the Bosnian-Hercegovinian public.79 Before the paper was launched, Schmarda invited the cooperation of Safet Beg Bašagic, who in the following years was a pro-Croat opinion leader among loyal Muslims.80 According to the announcement made in the Bosnische Post, the new paper was launched with the intention of cultivating and fostering love for and loyalty to the dynasty, and at the same time be the flag-bearer of modern progress.81 Schmarda made Gjuro Vrignanin editor-in-chief. The editorial office rejected the mistaken idea that the newspaper Bosanska Pošta was just a translation of the Bosnische Post, and underlined that it was completely different from the “German colleagues.” It was only “by chance” that it bore the same name, and the two papers shared only the telegram articles. In May 1897 Tausk assumed the management of the paper.82 But as he was “too involved with other tasks,” he was succeeded in August by Josip M. Čebular83 as the new head of the paper. Sometimes the Bosnische Post during these years was not even balanced; thus, in 1897 it had harsh words of support for the actions of the government against the opposition movement among Serbian Church congregations. However, in this case the crisis had already attracted international interest, so the Bosnische Post could rely on articles of the Neue Freie Presse (Vienna), for example.84 In its own articles the paper largely communicated the position of the government or supported it in a broader historical framework.85 Significantly, the German consul now based his reports more on international press clippings than on articles from the Bosnische Post. The lack of reliable background information from within the country led in this same year to the emergence of rumours about pervasive anarchy. The Bosnische Post assumed British, French, or Russian sources as the origin of such “scare stories.”86 79  Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 264. 80  “Poziv Safvetbegu Bašagiću na saradnju u listu Bosnische Post. Sarajevo, 26. Oktobra 1896” [Call to Safet Beg Bašagić on cooperation with the newspaper Bosnische Post], in Kultura i umjetnost, no. 184—Bašagić was studying in Vienna at that time. 81  “Bosanska Pošta,” Bosnische Post, 23 November 1896; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 262–4. 82  “Bosanska Pošta,” Bosanska Pošta, 30 January 1897; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 262–4. 83  “Promjene kod Bosanske Pošte”Bosanska Pošta], Bosanka Pošta, 3 August 1897. 84  “Die Agitation unter den bosnischen Orthodoxen,” Bosnische Post, 11 February 1897. 85  “Sarajevo, 9. März,” Bosnische Post, 9 March 1897. 86  “Bosnische Schauergeschichten,” Bosnische Post, 2 August 1892.

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In August 1897 Selak left the Bosnische Post allegedly at his own request “for health reasons.” But in fact he subsequently tried to establish his own newspaper, the Stimmen aus Bosnien, with the claim of being independent. However, without major financial support, the paper survived only from August 1898 to February 1899. Selak died on 9 June 1906 in Zagreb. One obituary praised him as a polyglot translator but called him unrealistic (“weltfremd”).87 9

Oskar Hirth (1897–1901) and Franz Mach (1901–1906)

While Selak remained only an editor in charge, his successor Oskar Hirth (1869–1932) was designated with the title “Editor-in-Chief” in the masthead. With Hirth a generational change was initiated: like his successor Franz Mach, who was nearly the same age, he came from the Viennese liberal newspaper Neues Wiener Tagblatt, and like him, after a few years in Sarajevo he returned to this paper (1901), where he later became the editor-in-charge. Hirth came originally from Lower Austria but had lived in Sarajevo for ten years as a child. He knew Bosnian, had attended high school in Sarajevo, and gained early experiences in the service of the Bosnische Post as a high school student. Like his two successors, he was a reserve officer and quite young (28 years old).88 The recruitment of Viennese journalists was probably useful to bring the paper closer to the standards, networks, and advertising markets of the newspaper industry in other parts of the monarchy, and in return may have helped to give Bosnia and Hercegovina a stronger presence in the Viennese press. However, accusations by the opposition for being the voice of a quasi-colonial regime could hardly be countered by such short-term “imports.” The Muslim opposition articulated their grievances in these years mostly at public meetings or in petitions. The Bosnische Post avoided commenting sharply on this, preferring instead to translate and promote the views of loyal Muslims to their German readers, not as part of the news section, but by translating selected literary works, or by giving summaries of lectures given by their representatives at Muslim reading halls; additionally there was a listing of who was present for the events, from the group of top officials to the Bosniak elite, including references to the get-togethers that followed such evenings. The speakers thereby came from both sides, e.g. Konstantin Hörmann, who spoke at the end of July 1897 to this audience on Bosnian history. In praise of a lecture 87  “Todesfall,” Agramer Zeitung, 11 June 1906. 88  “An die Leser der Bosnischen Post,” Bosnische Post, 2 August 1897; “Redakteur Oskar Hirth,” Wiener Zeitung, 29 January 1932; Kruševac, Bosansko-hercegovački listovi, 180.

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by Safet Beg Bašagić in the Bosnische Post from 1898, it could be noted how he had become one of the esteemed and favoured contact persons for the administration, replacing the already ill mayor Kapetanović, who died at the end of 1899. On one of these occasions Bašagić presented his history of Bosnia. It was printed as a book by the publisher of the Bosnische Post, taking the opportunity to present the Bošnjak national narrative to its readers.89 Bašagić soon became a proponent of those younger Muslim intellectuals who in the late 1890s adopted a pro-Croat stance as an alternative to the rapprochement of the Serbian and Muslim oppositions. This was favoured by the Bosnische Post as well; to demonstrate the risks of a Montenegrin-Muslim alliance, the paper did not hesitate to translate articles from the Hrvatsko Pravo, the paper of the followers of Ante Starčević and his “greater Croatia” ideas.90 However, it seems that the Bosnische Post preferred the secular wing of Croat nationalism, probably for its inclusive attitude towards Bosnian Muslims. This was evident in 1900 during the manifestations of the Croat Trebević choral society, which were, while nationalistic, presented by the Bosnische Post in a benevolent light as quasi-official public events, just one year after severe disputes surrounding the consecration of the society’s flag had ended with a victory for the inclusive wing of Croatian nationalism. The positive reaction of the Bosnische Post differed here from that of the leading Budapest newspaper Pester Lloyd, and stood in opposition to the local Roman Catholic bishop Josip Stadler as well, while it was in line with the Appel administration, if not an expression of their strategies.91 This is evidenced by the fact that the German consul found the descriptions in the Bosnische Post “faint and formless. Of course, because they are Kállay-friendly.”92 89  “Die Vortragsabende in der Kiraethana,” Bosnische Post, 18 February 18, 1898; Bosnische Post, 31 July 1897; Bosnische Post, 11 February 1898; “Ein neues muhamedanisches Blatt,” Bosnische Post, 31 March 1900; cf. Kraljačić, Kalajev režim, 162–3. 90  “Sarajevo, 4. Oktober,” Bosnische Post, 4 October 1898; cf. Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism, 121; Kraljačić, Kalajev režim, 294. 91  “Die Fahnen-Feier des Trebević,” Bosnische Post, 5 June 1900; Pester Lloyd, 5 June 1900. 92   Finck: An seine Durchlaucht, den Herrn Reichskanzler Fürsten zu HohenloheSchillingfürst. Sarajevo, den 9. Juni 1900 PAAA R 12920; as Okey (Taming Balkan Nationalism, 121–2) points it out: “Those who predominated in the singing and dramatic societies which sprang up, the most famous of the former being ‘Trebević’ in Sarajevo and ‘Hrvoje’ in Mostar, were officials and free professionals. For such people the movement of young Muslims towards Croatian periodicals and culture was an augury for a modern nation. The idea of nationality based on religion was anathema to the modern spirit. Only the bursting of the bonds of confessionalism would enable Croatdom to win out in Bosnia as a majoritarian force and thereby help fulfil the larger dream of a Bosnia restored to the historic unity of Croatian state rights.” One must differentiate between the strong Catholic component of Croatian nationalism, which became dominant during and after

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To clarify, it is hardly possible to speak of an “open” communication of governmental politics or analytical journalism during these years. The newspaper was mostly filled with “news in brief,” business developments, advertisements, and short stories. In a similar way it was more the absence of symbolic references to Catholicism in the Bosnische Post which “spoke volumes,” not an explicit programmatic anti-clericalism. But one can say that the newspaper largely avoided identity politics and community building based on confessionalism throughout its existence, even though probably most of its readers belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. Some of the Bosnische Post’s most prominent editors were Jewish, like Tausk and later Steinhardt (1910–1918),93 and names like Lewy (a local brewery) indicate that some of the companies which advertised in the Bosnische Post belonged to Jewish families. Even though the newspaper was otherwise closely connected to the Viennese public and its Zeitgeist, it showed no signs of antisemitism.94 Instead we regularly find brief, but “friendly” and respectful notifications and references to events of the local Ashkenazi as well as the newly founded (1896) Protestant congregations in Sarajevo. Reports in the Bosnische Post and in other semi-official newspapers mentioned the attend­ ance of prominent members of the government and the Sarajevo establishment at Protestant weddings and funerals;95 similar evidence of a balanced approach on church-related issues can be seen by the way the administration symbolically supported the building of an impressive Protestant church in Sarajevo, then (1899) one of the biggest buildings of the city.96 However, the Bosnische Post remained as reserved towards German national aspirations as it was towards all national movements, although these, too, gradually became more noticeable in reaction to Southern Slavic nationalism. A dinner society (Tischgesellschaft) which started to meet in 1899 transitioned into the free association of the “Deutsche Stammtisch” in 1906, and by 1908 had become the Verein der Deutschen in Bosnien und Herzegowina (National the Second World War, and nineteenth-century “state rights” nationalism. Catholic clericalism definitely also had roots in Stadler’s ways of thinking, but even the fascist Ustashe in 1941 still had an inclusive approach towards Bosnian Muslims. See Mirjana Gross, “Hrvatska politika u Bosni i Hercegovini od 1878 do 1914” [Croatian politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina.], Historijski zbornik 19–20 (1966–67): 8–61; on Stadler: Zoran Grijak, Politička djelatnost vrhbosanskog nadbiskupa Josipa Stadlera [Political activity of the Archbishop of High Bosnia, Josip Stadler] (Zagreb: Hrvatski Institut za Povijest, 2001) 93  For biographic details: Bethke, “Die Zeitungen ‘Bosnische Post’ und ‘Sarajevoer Tagblatt,’ 1903–1913,” 156. 94  Open rejection was, however, rare too: “Sarajevo, 30. April,” Bosnische Post, 1 May 1889. 95  “Trauung,” Bosnische Post, 13 March 1901; “Pogreb” [Funeral], Sarajevksi List, 18 March 1900. 96  “Die neue evangelische Kirche,” Bosnische Post, 18 November 1900; see also Bosnische Post, 20 November 1899.

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Association of Germans in Bosnia and Hercegovina).97 The association and its predecessor were only very sporadically mentioned in the Bosnische Post in the context of urban social life, as was the case with its Czech counterpart Češka Beseda. From an economic point of view, within a few years the move to daily distribution resulted in considerable difficulties. On 20 July 1899 Schmarda requested from the state government that every authority and every agency should be asked to take on a subscription of the paper. He pointed out that thanks to dispatch services, news now often reached Bosnia and Hercegovina on the same day; nevertheless, despite efforts like advertising in train stations, he had not been able to increase the number of subscriptions to more than 700. He distributed the newspaper in the monarchy in the same way as abroad, “in order to familiarize the reader with the cultural advances of my second fatherland.” To be sure, a letter dated 16 September to state government section chief Isidor Baron Benko shows that he also held censorship and self-censorship responsible for the difficulties: the newspaper had, according to Schmarda, to avoid a conflict between preventive self-censorship and readers’ interest, while any free expression of opinion and criticism seemed impossible. To secure further publication, he suggested the acquisition of 300 more subscriptions. Following these inquiries, the state government established a circulation of 860 and authorized Schmarda’s request on 13 November 1899.98 Franz Mach (1872–1938), Hirth’s successor as Editor-in-Chief of 1 September 1901, also came from Lower Austria. He attended the military academy in Wiener Neustadt. After graduating as First Lieutenant of the reserve in 1894, he was employed as an editor at the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, to which he would, like Hirth, later return; moreover, he had worked previously for the Prager Tagblatt and other papers, and as a translator too. During his military service he acquired several Slavic languages at various garrisons, but not Bosnian; however, he studied it, and Schmarda assumed it would be easy for him to learn it equally well.99 The successor to Mach as of 1906, Hermenegild Wagner also came from 97  Verein der Deutschen in Bosnien und der Hercegowina in Sarajevo Bundesarchiv Berlin (BA) R 57 5384; Deutscher Stammtisch Sarajevo, ibid. 5389; Bethke, “Die Zeitungen ‘Bosnische Post’ und ‘Sarajevoer Tagblatt,’ 1903–1913,” 151–2. 98  Landesregierung für Bosnien und die Herzegowina (Kutschera): Gem. Ministerium betreffend ein Gesuch des JB Schmarda um Subventionierung der “Bosn. Post.” Sarajevo, 13.11. 1899 ABiH ZVS 595–1899. 99  Landesregierung für Bosnien und die Herzegowina: JB Schmarda (Die Bosnische Post, Eigentümer) Wien, Mitteilung, dass mit 1/IX an Stelle des Oscar Hirth der Journalist Franz Mach als Chefredakteur der “Bosn. Post” beitritt. Wien, den 24. Juli 1901 ABiH ZVS 381–1901; “Mach, Franz (1872–1938), Journalist,” in Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon

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Viennese professional journalism (the Österreichische Volkszeitung). Like Hirth he had attended school in Sarajevo and was a reserve officer as well. His mother was Croatian and he had studied in Zagreb.100 According to historian Edith Walter, both the Neues Wiener Tagblatt and Österreichische Volkszeitung were among the papers that had individual journalists covertly on the payroll of the foreign ministry.101 The year 1903 marked a major turning point in the history of the AustroHungarian administration in Bosnia and Hercegovina: the political upheaval caused by the change of dynasty in Serbia and the growing unrest in Croatia greatly altered the political situation in South Slavic-speaking countries, and at the same time the death of the Minister of Finance, Kállay, had far-reaching effects on Bosnia and Hercegovina. His successor István Burian dismissed Governor Appel and embarked on a “new course.”102 This was intended to include a departure from the previous pro-Bosniak policy and a greater openness towards the Bosnian-Hercegovinian Serbs, as well as a diminution of the previous position of the German language, which led among other things to reduced funding for the Bosnische Post.103 Until the relaxation of press censorship in 1907, journalistic scope during these years was limited more than ever, which possibly had consequences for the orientation of their readers, since the political analysis and commentary in those years referred more to Croatia than to domestic politics. Meanwhile the Bosnian Serbian press became increasingly active and the Bošnjak, long an “ally” of the Bosnische Post, also lost its former prestige and importance.104 10 Conclusion When the Bosnische Post first appeared in 1884, there were still many Germanlanguage newspapers printed all over the monarchy. But unlike in the Russian or French “nationalizing empires,” this phenomenon had already been in 1815–1950 (1972), http://www.biographien.ac.at/oebl/oebl_M/Mach_Franz_1872_1938.xml (accessed 1 May 2017). 100  Schmarda, Die Bosnische Post, to Gemeinsames Ministerium Wien, 19.11.1906 ABiH ZMF 1906-12860. 101  Edith Walter, Österreichische Tageszeitungen der Jahrhundertwende. Ideologischer Anspruch und ökonomische Erfordernisse (Vienna: Böhlau, 1994), 163. 102  Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism, 145, 171. 103  Ministerium des Äußeren, Literarisches Bureau: Einstellung der Subvention für das in Sarajevo erscheinende Journal Bosnische Post. Wien, 20.6.1904 HHSA PL 107, 301/5, 1904. 104  Bethke, “Die Zeitungen ‘Bosnische Post’ und ‘Sarajevoer Tagblatt,’ 1903–1913,” 143–4.

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decline at least since the 1867 Compromise, and many German speakers who had emigrated to non-German areas in the eighteenth century or earlier were already undergoing the process of assimilation. Therefore, the 1878 introduction of German as an administrative language in Bosnia—a region without a significant German population—was an unusual decision resulting from Bosnia and Hercegovina’s particular international legal situation and political difficulties, but which was maintained until 1918. Challenging the position of the German language became a core issue of the anti-Habsburg opposition.105 But the language conflict in Bosnia and Hercegovina also differed from that of other regions, as there was at least no antagonism between two ethnolinguistic groups, even though the “language question” as well as the distinction between immigrants and locals remained socially and politically meaningful: German native speakers in Sarajevo were a minority within a broad community of immigrants of many nationalities and language groups from all over the monarchy. The function and social role of the German language in this situation was however important in every respect. The Bosnische Post received support from the Common Ministry of Finance, the Bosnian-Hercegovinian government, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but it was not really a “government paper.” This is why the owner, Schmarda, had tried repeatedly since 1896 to compensate for his deficits by means of “hidden” subsidies, such as the public retail of printing services from his printing house affiliated with the newspaper.106 Due to the structure of the Habsburg monarchy, “donations” and influences in the course of the 34-year history of the newspaper had various sources and motives, but a precise reconstruction remains difficult without the archives of the newspaper, which have not survived to the present day. In 1912 Governor Oskar Potiorek claimed that the government had “a certain influence” on the Bosnische Post.107 Instead, I would suggest explaining its frequent evaluation as a “semi-official”108 newspaper based on the fact that it was linked to a certain milieu close to the 105  On this, see Južbašić, Nacionalno-politički odnosi u Bosanskohercegovačkom saboru i jezičko pitanje (1910–1914). 106  Joh. Bap. Schmarda an Hohes k. und k. gemeinsames Ministerium des kaiserlich und des königlichen Hauses und des Äußeren, Wien, 27.6.1904 HSA PL 107, 362, 1904; Schmarda, Die Bosnische Post: An Gemeinsames Ministerium, Wien, 26.3.1907ABiH ZMF 1907-3828. 107   F ZM Potiorek, “Entwicklung der innerpolitischen Lage in der Zeit vom 19. bis 24. Dezember 1912” in Lične zabilješke generala Oskara Potioreka o unutrašnjopolitičkoj situaciji u Bosni i Hercegovini [Personal notes of general Oskar Potiorek on the internal political situation in Bosnia and Hercegovina], ed. Dževad Juzbašić and Zijad Šehić (Sarajevo: Akademija nauka i umjetnosti Bosne i Hercegovine, 2015), 296. 108  William Miller, Travels and Politics in the Near East (London: T. F. Unwin, 1898), 113.

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Bosnian-Hercegovinian government and its state officials, and therefore surely had good connections. It was this position that made the paper a symbol of the Austro-Hungarian lifestyle as well as a mirror of the multiple political upheavals and changes of that period, in particular the turn of 1903 and the crisis of the political “climate” (indeed sharpened by crop failures and floods)109 that emerged in the mid-1890s. It must be assumed that the paper itself even contributed to the dynamics of that crisis; government officials (e.g. Berks) spoke of a “flattening” of the paper, and its hesitant course after 1896 was probably guided by political caution and commercial considerations. And yet the course of the paper could have been as much a result of ignorance, indifference, and powerlessness—all the more as the simultaneous “import” of young journalists from Vienna could be interpreted in a similar fashion. However, viewed as a whole over the decades, the Bosnische Post could indeed be identified with a distinct political-cultural position. During a period of history that was increasingly characterized by the rise of nationalist movements, it represented a monarchical and imperial but at the same time “civic” and emphatically secular attitude, corresponding to the transnational and multilingual or interdenominational makeup of its readers. It thus proved an antipode to the emerging nationalist movements of the time, and was therefore seen by them as a challenge, if not a threat. Significantly, when the Bosnian-Hercegovinian parliament (Landtag) was first elected in 1910, the Bosnische Post was immediately attacked there as a symbol of Germanness,110 although the paper had never regarded itself as such. This is all the more notable since, by around 1900, German national aspirations had become apparent in Bosnia too; indeed, Milena Mrazović’s husband, Josef Preindlsberger, and individual employees of the Bosnische Post were members of the “Verein der Deutschen.”111 However, even though such an option was present in the immediate social environment of the editors, it was nonetheless deliberately left out of the newspaper’s contents and image. Similarly, the paper avoided any identification as “Catholic,” although membership in the Catholic church was a common characteristic for a majority of immigrants. In fact, even though most of its readers were of Croat or German-Austrian origin, the Bosnische Post spent probably more effort promoting Bosnian culture, history, and patriotism than it did German or Croatian national identities. This approach was linked to the government’s strategy of differentiating between Islam as a confession and the Ottoman state; by the 109  Ferdo Hauptmann, “Predgovor,” in Borba muslimana Bosne i Hercegovine, 27. 110  “Landtag,” Bosnische Post, 19 July 1910. 111  Mitgliederverzeichnis des “Vereins der Deutschen in Bosnien und der Hercegowina” in Sarajevo am Ende des 10. Bestandjahres, Oktober 1909 BA R 57 5384.

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same token, it was hardly on the agenda of the Bosnische Post to reflect at large on the Ottoman heritage and language in Bosnia and Hercegovina. The story of the Bosnische Post reminds us that practices in connection to multilingualism within the Habsburg monarchy were not and could not exist “abstractly” or in a vacuum, and were therefore never entirely neutral. Instead, in many situations, especially in urban spaces, the use of German was a tool or widespread and accepted modus operandi for communication. The Habsburg monarchy as such was not a nationalizing empire, but it encompassed societies which were in many ways on the edge of modernity and therefore had a need for functional context-free communication (as discussed by Ernest Gellner). Especially in an environment like the one of the Bosnische Post, the German language therefore did not have the sense of a national language and its use did not constitute any such commitment, as it did not “belong” to one group. Instead it served as a medium of communication between many people, within the highly diverse group of immigrants, increasingly between locals and Kuferaši, and also between Bosnia as a country and a cultural setting on the one side, and the Central European, especially German-speaking, readership on the other. Indeed, even though the Bosnische Post primarily addressed the inhabitants of Sarajevo, the share of subscribers from outside was—37 per cent according to a figure from 1907112—exceptionally high. Considering this and its contents, as briefly sketched in this chapter, one could hardly call this communication a “one-way street”; quite the contrary, it regularly presented a selection of Bosnian authors, ideas, views, and issues to a much broader European audience, including many articles relating to Islam and Bosnian Muslims. It was famous as a “shopwindow” of Vienna, but offered insights on Bosnia and Hercegovina too. My conclusion is therefore that the newspaper, even though it appeared in German, was more a “space of encounter” between cultural spheres, as a product of its epoch, particular situation, and of course perspective, than a serious contributor to the spread of German or “German cultural hegemony.”

112  Mandl: Abschrift eines Privatbriefes aus Wien vom 2. April 1907 HHSA PL 107, 246 1907.

Chapter 7

K.u.K. Generals of Romanian Nationality and Their Views on the Language Question Irina Marin 1 Introduction The Militärgrenze, the militarized territory that buffered the Habsburg Empire against Ottoman inroads up until the nineteenth century and, at its high watermark, stretched all along its southern border from the Adriatic to northern Transylvania, functioned as a hothouse of ready-trained manpower and gave rise to local military traditions that resulted in the creation of autochthonous military elites. This was the case also with the Banat segment of the Austrian Military Border, where the Romanian Banat Border Regiment no. 13 led to the formation of an elite stratum of fifteen imperial generals by the First World War and paved the way for many more high-ranking officers of Romanian ethnicity. After the 1867 Settlement the territory of the Banat Border Regiment no. 13 was eventually de-militarized and, by the early 1880s, it was included into the Hungarian half of the Monarchy. While the Military Border was directly subordinated to Vienna, the authorities ensured that loyalty to the House of Habsburg was encouraged in conjunction with fostering local identity and a sense of ethnic pride. Thus, in the Romanian segment of the Military Border, just like in the Croatian border regiments, military pride and loyalty were intertwined with a strong awareness of national belonging.1 Some of the military 1  Antoniu Marchescu, Grănicerii bănăţeni şi Comunitatea de Avere (Contribuţiuni istorice şi juridice) [The Banat frontiersmen and their commonwealth (Historical and legal contributions)] (Caransebeş: Tiparul Tipografiei Diecezane Caransebeş, 1941); Ladislau Gyémant, “Die rumänische Grenzbevölkerung aus Siebenbürgen. Stellung und Streben” [The Romanian frontier population in Transylvania. Their Status and Aspirations], in The Austrian Military Border: Its Political and Cultural Impact, ed. Liviu Maior, Nicolae Bocşan, and Ioan Bolovan (Iași: Editura Glasul Bucovinei, 1994), 33; Liviu Groza and Günter Klein, “Die rumänischen Offiziere in der k.(u.)k. Armee. Sozialer Aufstieg ohne Verlust der nationalen Identität?” [Romanian officers in the Habsburg army. Social ascent without the loss of national identity?], in Revista istorică 7, nos. 3–4 (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 1996): 175–89; Liviu Maior, Românii în armata habsburgică [Romanians in the Habsburg army] (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică, 2004); Liviu Groza, Contribuţii la istoria regimentului de graniţă româno-bănăţean nr. 13 din Caransebeş [Contributions to the history of the Romanian Banat

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004407978_008

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elites that emerged from this environment were involved in cultural activities and took active part in the community life of their national group. The present contribution explores the extant testimonies of several imperial generals of Romanian nationality who originated from the Military Border and foregrounds their attitudes to the language question in the monarchy, their views on language use and on Magyarization, as well as the way they themselves used the various languages of the empire. Although the present analysis relies on a small sample of sources, it nevertheless is important as a contribution to literature on the Habsburg officer corps, all the more so as personal testimonies and especially expressions of political views by high-ranking officers are few and far between and by no means cover all of the ethnic groups in the officer corps. The present contribution also shows how variegated the political and cultural options of Habsburg officers could be, depending on their background and social circumstances. As ascertaining an officer’s ethnic background is a complex matter of corroborating disparate bits of information (the army documents as such being nationality-blind), I have established the Romanian-ness of the four generals forming my sample in this contribution by a combination of shared factors: military records (they all have Romanian listed as a fluent language), personal correspondence written in Romanian, personal testimonies in which they talk about their Romanian background, participation in Romanian cultural initiatives, and their promotion of the Romanian nation. In what follows I will provide a few clarifications as regards the nature and limits of extant archival sources. When it comes to high-ranking imperial officers of Romanian nationality, the source base available is fairly sparse and fragmented. This is due to a number of factors. First, k.u.k. officers did not leave behind a wealth of memoirs. Second, many sources were scattered as a consequence of the dissolution of the monarchy in 1918. Thus, depending on the country of residence chosen by the generals in question, their private papers were left behind in places like Vienna or Graz. Third, in Romania under communism there was no interest in highlighting these people’s imperial careers, as they Border Regiment No. 13 in Caransebeş] (Lugoj: Editura Dacia Europa Nova, 2002); Irina Marin, “The Formation and Allegiance of the Romanian Military Elite Originating from the Banat Military Border” (PhD diss., University College London, 2009): http://discovery. ucl.ac.uk/18562/1/18562.pdf; Drago Roksandić, ed., Microhistory of the Triplex Confinium: International Project Conference Papers (Budapest: Institute on South Eastern Europe, CEU Press, 1998); Drago Roksandić and Natasa Stefanec, eds., Constructing Border Societies on the Triplex Confinium: International Project Conference Papers 2. Plan and Practice. How to Construct a Border Society? The Triplex Confinium 1700–1750 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2000); Gunther E. Rothenberg, The Military Border in Croatia, 1740–1881: A Study of an Imperial Institution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).

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did not easily square with contemporaneous assumptions about Romanian national identity or with communist ideology. Thus, little or no effort was made to retrieve these personal papers and release them for academic research. After 1989 several authors have written about these officers while at times relying on sources that are no longer retrievable. Direct personal testimonies have been preserved for only four of the fifteen high-ranking officers from the Romanian section of the Military Border—Generalmajor (GM) Trajan Doda (1822–1895), Feldmarschalleutnant (FML) Michael von Trapsia (1838–1896), GM Alexander Lupu (1838–1925), and FML Nikolaus Cena (1844–1922)—while for others such as Oberst David Urs de Margina (1816–1897), FML Theodor Seracin (1836–1901), GM Georg Domaschnian (1868–1940), and GM Daniel Mataranga (1850–1918) indirect references point to involvement in Romanian cultural activities. 2

Languages in the Empire, Languages in the Army

After the 1867 Settlement, two legislative systems came into being on either side of the Leitha River, each with their own peculiarities and differing considerably with respect to nationalities and their languages. In the Austrian half of the monarchy the constitution stipulated the complete equality in rights and duties of all nationalities. There was no separate law that dealt with languages or nationalities, and there was no single dominant nation (at least on paper) and no attempt at legislating a unitary nation (civic or otherwise). In other words, all ethnic groups in Cisleithania were nationalities. In Hungary, the 1868 Nationalities Law (Gesetzesartikel XLIV ) as it is commonly known, enunciated similar liberal principles of equality (use of vernacular languages in schools and local and regional administration, for example), with the notable difference of an initial stipulation to the effect that all nationalities of Hungary were subsumed under an overarching nation, the Hungarian nation: “all citizens of Hungary, according to the principles of the constitution, form from a political point of view one nation, the indivisible unitary Hungarian nation, of which every citizen of the fatherland is a member, no matter to what nationality he belongs.”2 This in itself would not have been deleterious (although this stipulation roused much discontent among non-Magyar national leaders), if the term Magyar had not increasingly been understood by Hungarian statesmen as an ethnic, not a civic category. This led towards the end of the nineteenth century

2  R.W. Seton-Watson, Racial Problems in Hungary (London: Constable, 1908), 429.

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to a state-driven policy of Magyarization.3 The liberal stipulations of the 1868 law of nationalities were effectively overwritten by “Act XVIII of 1879, which introduced Hungarian into primary schools as a mandatory subject” and thus sought to render obsolescent the previous law.4 Cultural chicanery aimed at the non-Magyar nationalities was one of the more conspicuous consequences of Magyarization (cultural societies and theaters shut down, confiscation of funds, and the refusal to approve the opening of schools in the languages of the minorities).5 As Ágoston Berecz has pointed out in his excellent analysis of language policies in the primary schools of southeastern dualist Hungary (and as he demonstrates in his contribution to the present volume), policies of Magyarization differed in their scope, intention, and especially effects. The assimilationist agenda dominated the outlook of Hungarian elites throughout the nineteenth century and became intensified after the Settlement, when it took two forms: a more moderate one, which sought to spread knowledge of Hungarian among the entire population of dualist Hungary, and a radical one, which sought to impose Hungarian at the expense of all other languages.6 Although the intentions behind these policies and their effects varied, one thing is certain: forceful Magyarization contributed little to actual ethnic and cultural assimilation. If anything, it created resentment among the nonMagyar elites and did nothing to ameliorate the high rates of illiteracy among the peasant population (for instance, the rate of literacy in the Romanianinhabited counties of Transylvania ranged between 20 and 30 percent). By contrast, the equally underdeveloped Szekler counties had almost double the rate of literacy.7 As we shall see further on in this chapter, at least two of the officers expressing views on the language and nationalities question in dualist

3  Irina Marin, “The Formation and Allegiance of the Romanian Military Elite,” 82–83; SetonWatson, Racial Problems in Hungary, 148; László Péter, “Verfassungsentwicklung in Ungarn”, in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. 7/1, Verfassung und Parlamentarismus, ed. Peter Urbanitsch and Helmut Rumpler (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, 2000), 366. 4  Ágoston Berecz, The Politics of Early Language Teaching: Hungarian in the Primary Schools of the Late Dual Monarchy (Budapest: CEU Press, 2013), 52. 5  The Romanian Question in Transylvania and in Hungary. Reply of the Romanian Students of Transylvania and Hungary (Vienna, Budapest, Graz, Cluj: 1892), 53; Josef Volkmar Senz, Geschichte der Donauschwaben (Vienna: Almathea, 1993), 147; Cornelia Bodea and Hugh Seton-Watson, eds., Seton-Watson şi Românii 1906–1920, vol. 2 (Bucharest: Editura Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, 1988), 623. 6  Berecz, The Politics of Early Language Teaching, 49. 7  Magyar Statistikai Évkönyv [Hungarian statistical yearbook], Új folyam, 1907 (Budapest: Az Atheneum Irodalmi és Nyomdai részvénytársulat könyvnyomdája, 1909), 206.

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Hungary reacted emphatically against Magyarization and spelled out its negative consequences. Within the imperial army languages had a functional, instrumental role. There were three linguistic levels in the army: language of command (Kommandosprache), language of service (Dienstsprache), and the regimental languages (Regimentssprache). The first two were German while the last one depended on the ethnic makeup of the region where the regiment was based. As Norman Stone has pointed out and as comes out of the military records of high-ranking imperial officers, the most successful and the most valued officers were in possession of up to eight languages (admittedly with varying degrees of proficiency, half of them being described as fluent while for the other half the terms zum Dienstgebrauch genügend [sufficient for military service] or notdürftig [scanty] were used).8 This multilingualism was also a consequence of the military regulation that an officer had to learn the regimental language within three years of his appointment. As part of the same drive towards state Magyarization, there were attempts to introduce Hungarian in the common army at the beginning of the twentieth century.9 Requests for the introduction of Hungarian as a language of command for the regiments recruited from dualist Hungary were part and parcel of the need to appease nationalist politicians in Hungary who were disenchanted with the slow progress of Magyarization and harked back to the success of German a century earlier among the non-German nationalities of Hungary (in particular in the Military Border).10 What the Hungarian statesmen lost sight of, however, were the circumstances in which this precedent had occurred and its aim. In the Military Border, German was introduced in conjunction with fostering local languages and not by ruffling local sensibilities, and its success was due to the fact that it came to be viewed as a means of social ascent rather than social exclusion.11 For all the tug-of-war between Vienna and Budapest in the early twentieth century, the common army remained an anational imperial institution and stayed clear of nationalizing trends. 8  Norman Stone, “Army and Society in the Habsburg Monarchy 1900–1914,” Past and Present 33 (1966): 100; Johann Christoph Allmayer-Beck, “Die bewaffnete Macht in Staat und Gesellschaft”, in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. 5, Die bewaffnete Macht, ed. Peter Urbanitsch and Adam Wandruszka (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987), 99. 9  Norman Stone, “Army and Society,” 105–6. 10  Berecz, The Politics of Early Language Teaching, 51, 53. 11  Victor Ţîrcovnicu, Contribuţii la istoria învăţământului românesc din Banat (1780–1918) [Contributions to the history of Romanian education in the Banat (1780–1918)] (Bucharest: Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică, 1970), 71.

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The Romanian Community

The Romanian officers from the Austrian Military Border whose personal testimonies have been preserved (GM Trajan Doda, FML Michael von Trapsia, GM Alexander Lupu, and FML Nikolaus Cena) represented both military and national elites. According to extant documents, they maintained close relations with Romanian political leaders within the Empire, as testified to by correspondence preserved among the personal papers of Romanian national leaders such as Vincențiu Babeș, Valeriu Braniște, and Alexandru Mocsonyi. Following the 1867 Settlement, the politically-aware Romanian community in the Hungarian half of the empire split into passivists and activists, depending on their respective attitudes to the obstructionism and gerrymandering practiced in Hungarian politics at the time. Passivists considered that boycotting the electoral process altogether was the only solution to rampant electoral corruption, while activists were of the opinion that only active involvement and participation in politics could lead to any significant political gains for the Romanian community.12 The desiderata highlighted in the national programs of Romanian leaders in the Hungarian half of the monarchy were political representation commensurate with demographics (at a time when only 6 percent of the male population had the right to vote),13 cultural development (national schools, societies, church), and less frequently, but certainly not to be neglected, irredentism, usually expressed when all else failed. It was from amidst the Romanian community that the vision of the federalization of the monarchy sprung: Die Vereinigte Staaten von Grossösterreich (The United States of Greater Austria) was written in 1906 by a Romanian lawyer from Temesvár (Timișoara/Temišvar) in the Banat.14 How did these generals fit into the Romanian community of Hungary? They were supporters of cultural initiatives, subscribers to national newspapers, 12  Teodor Păcăţian, Cartea de aur sau luptele politice-naţionale ale românilor de sub Coroana ungară [The golden book or the political-national struggles of Romanians under the Hungarian crown], vol. 5 (Sibiu: Tipografia Arhidiecezană, 1909); Vlad Popovici and Ovidiu Iudean, “The Elective Representation of the Romanians in the Hungarian Parliament,” Studia Universitatis Petru Maio. Historia 11 (Târgu Mureș, 2011); Judit Pál and Vlad Popovici, eds., Elites and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe 1848–1918 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2014). 13  Andrew Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary: 1825–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); R.W. Seton-Watson, Corruption and Reform in Hungary: A Study of Electoral Practice (London: Constable, 1911). 14  Aurel Popovici, Die Vereinigten Staaten von Groß-Österreich. Politische Studien zur Lösung der nationalen Fragen und staatsrechtlichen Krisen in Österreich-Ungarn (Leipzig, 1906).

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funders of national schools—in one word, they were facilitators. They were prominent personalities who possessed the knowhow, connections, prestige, and not least, the money to buttress the cultural initiatives of their national community.15 Generalmajor Trajan Doda (1822–1895) was born in the Banat Military Border and was an outstanding graduate of the Wiener Neustadt Military Academy. He was ethnically Romanian and a Catholic. He was one of the proud holders of the Militärverdienstkreuz, the military merit cross, having distinguished himself in 1848/49 and subsequent wars. After the dissolution of the Military Border, which started in 1871, he acted as president of the Banat Border Commonwealth (Comunitatea de Avere), the organization that administered the communal possessions of the former Romanian border regiment. Shortly after he retired, he entered politics and was elected MP to the Hungarian Parliament between 1872 and 1887.16 From the very beginning of his political career, Doda ran on a national program, which started with the following kaisertreu caveat: “I am faithful to His Majesty the Emperor and King and I will not allow anyone to doubt this. I have defended the integrity of the fatherland and will go on defending it in the future to the best of my abilities … I recognize the 1867 pact concluded between Austria and Hungary as I do all currently valid laws which bear His Majesty’s sanction.”17 The “national” part of his program made explicit reference to the controversial Law XLIV, commonly referred to as the Nationalities Law, whose insufficiency Doda criticized not only in the name of the Romanian community but also on behalf of all non-Hungarian nationalities: “It is well known to you that the non-Hungarian peoples are not content with today’s situation. I am convinced that their main reason for discontent lies in the disregard for language, given the lack of a just law of nationalities based on equal rights.”18 Doda was 15  Gyémant, “Die rumänische Grenzbevölkerung aus Siebenbürgen,” 37. 16  Marin, “The Formation and Allegiance of the Romanian Military Elite,” 191. 17  “Ich bin treu Seiner Majestät dem Kaiser und König; ich erlaube Niemanden daran zu zweifeln. Ich habe die Integrität des Gesammtvaterlandes vertheidigt—und werde sie auch künftighin nach meinen Kräften vertheidigen; […] Den zwischen Oesterreich und Ungarn im Jahre 1867 geschlossenen Compromisspact erkenne ich an, gerade so wie ich auch alle in Geltung befindlichen, von Seiner Majestät sanctionirten Gesetze anerkenne.” Trajan Doda, “Rede gehalten am 26. November, 8. Dezember 1873 in einer Versammlung von Wählern des Wahlkreises Caransebeș,” ÖStA (Österreichisches Staatsarchiv), KA (Kriegsarchiv), KM Präs (Kriegsministerium Präsidium) 1874, Aktenzahl 9-2/2. 18  “Es ist Ihnen bekannt, dass die nichtmagyarischen Völker mit ihrem jetzigen Lose nicht zufrieden sind. Ich bin überzeugt, dass die Hauptursache ihrer Unzufriedenheit aus der

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in favor of widespread usage of vernacular languages in education and public administration: Each nationality has the right to educate and develop its youth in their mother tongue. On this premise, the Germans should have German schools; the Romanians, Romanian schools; the Serbs, Serbian schools; the Slovaks, Slovak schools; in short, each nationality should have schools in its language. National education and development should not, however, be confined to popular and civil schools, they should be extended to higher institutions, including universities. In short, all schools should be national schools.19 This insistence on the right of all nationalities to be educated in their own language is, as I pointed out elsewhere,20 to be traced back to a Grenzer mentality. In the Austrian Military Border, all vernacular languages as well as German were used in schools and the administration itself had, for efficiency’s sake, to be conducted with due regard to the local languages. Doda, however, qualified this desideratum with an awareness of the need for a state language, which he admitted must be Hungarian: “I thereby mean to bring no offense to the right of the dominant nation, that is, the Hungarian nation, for I favor that Hungarian should remain the language of the government and legislation.”21 In this respect, he came close to the moderate, integrationist views of his good friend, Alexandru Mocsonyi, a lawyer and political leader of

Missachtung ihrer Sprache, aus dem Mangel eines gerechten, auf dem gleichen Rechte fassenden Nationalitäten-Gesetzes entspringt.” Ibid. 19  “Jede Nationalität hat das Recht ihre Jugend in ihrer Muttersprache zu unterrichten und auszubilden. Demgemäss müssen die Deutschen deutsche, die Romanen romanische, die Serben serbische, die Slovaken slovakische Schulen haben, mit einem Worte: alle Nationalitäten in ihrer Sprache. Aber der nationale Unterricht und die nationale Bildung haben sich nicht auf die sogenannten Volks- und Bürgerschulen zu beschränken; sondern sie müssen sich auch auf die höheren Anstalten, die Universitäten inbegriffen, ausdehnen. Mit einem Worte alle Schulen müssen nationale Schulen sein.” Ibid. 20  Irina Marin, “Reforming the Better to Preserve: A K.u.K. General’s Views on Hungarian Politics,” in Eliten im Vielvölkerreich: Imperiale Biographien in Russland und ÖsterreichUngarn (1850–1918), ed. Malte Rolf and Tim Buchen (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2015), 155–77. 21  “Durch Vorbesagtes will ich durchaus nicht das Recht der führenden, d. i. der magyarischen Nation verletzen: sondern bin ich dafür, dass die magyarische Sprache die Regierungsund die Gesetzgebungs-Sprache bleibe.” Trajan Doda, “Rede gehalten am 26. November, 8. Dezember 1873 in einer Versammlung von Wählern des Wahlkreises Caransebeș,” OeStA, KA, KM Präs 1874, Aktenzahl 9-2/2; see also Rolf and Buchen, Imperiale Biographien.

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the Romanians in the Banat and a member of a prominent Aromanian22 noble family in southern Hungary. Were there any reactions to Doda’s political activity from the Hungarian establishment or Austrian military authorities? We know from extant documents that electoral meetings were closely supervised by the Hungarian authorities. Given that a considerable part of the archive of the Royal Hungarian Ministry of the Interior is currently to be found divided among branches of the Romanian National Archives, and its most substantial section (in the Cluj National Archives) has not been released for public research since its acquisition in 1919, evidence showing the extent of supervision that Doda came under is itself scanty. An order sent on 29 November 1887 by the deputy lord lieutenant (the Hungarian alispán) of Krassó-Szörény County to the mayor of Caransebeș (Karánsebes/Karansebesch) asked for vigilance against all antistate and illegal actions in anticipation of the voters’ assembly to be held in Caransebeș on 1 December that year. This event took place in the context of Trajan Doda’s re-election to parliament and his attempt to draw public attention to the corruption of the Hungarian electoral system by refusing to take his seat in Parliament in protest: We were informed that the letter MP Traian Doda of Caransebeş addressed for the second time to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and which was signed by several members of the ecclesiastic consistory of Caransebeş as well as by several retired k.u.k. officers, was printed and distributed to the population side by side with the manifesto addressed to the voters. In this manifesto the voters of the Caransebeş electoral district are summoned to the conference that will be held on the 1st of December in Caransebeş, where points of view will be considered as well as ways to support Doda’s mandate, [and] they are all urged to be present at the conference.23 As regards reactions from the k.u.k. military authorities, these are very few and far between and crop up in military documents related to instances where Doda got into trouble with Hungarian authorities. The beginnings of Doda’s career in politics occasioned such a reaction from the k.u.k. military authorities, after a series of defamatory articles were published in the Neue Temesvárer 22  Aromanians were a Romanized population from the Balkan Peninsula. 23  Mihail Corneliu Lungu, ed., De la Pronunciament la Memorandum 1868–1892. Mişcarea memorandistă, expresie a luptei naţionale a românilor [From the Pronunciamiento to the Memorandum 1868–1892. The Memorandum movement, expression of Romanians’ national struggle] (Bucharest: Arhivele Statului din România, 1993), 328.

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Zeitung calling into question the General’s honorable character and conduct during the electoral campaign. Doda defended his conduct in a report, dated 26 January 1874, submitted to the military command in Temesvár and forwarded by the latter to the War Ministry in Vienna.24 The article he referred to in his report was one of a series of incriminatory pieces that accused Doda of having deceived the Hungarian governmental party by leading them to believe he would act as their candidate in the forthcoming elections. The anonymous authors of the incriminatory article published in the Neue Temesvárer Zeitung claimed that the printed minutes of the meeting did not correspond to a speech Doda gave at the time, particularly in regard to his attack on the law of nationalities. This accusation, as pointed out earlier, alerted the military authorities in Temesvár, who asked Doda to provide an explanation, which they duly forwarded on to Vienna. The Temesvár command accepted Doda’s protestation of innocence and did not consider it necessary for this explanation to appear in print, pointing out that Doda as an MP could clarify the matter in one of the parliamentary debates.25 Doda’s most famous political stance, and the one that also put an end to his political career, occurred in 1887, when he was re-elected to parliament and refused to take up his parliamentary seat in protest against the rigging of elections. His justification was published and disseminated among Romanian electors and triggered a trial against him on the charge of incitement to hatred against the Hungarian nation. Having suffered a stroke, he was sentenced to prison in contumaciam (in absence), and two years later he petitioned the Emperor for grace. The only mention of the Doda saga in the documents of the Military Chancellery in Vienna occurs in a Konferenz-Protokoll of 26 December 1887, which shows that the legal action against Doda was brought to the Emperor’s attention as early as 1887, but only as a cursory note on the military agenda to be discussed by the monarch and his field marshals, with no additional remarks or comments.26 Two years later, Doda’s petition for grace which was addressed to the emperor was signed by the emperor himself and sent to Budapest, while the Hungarian authorities put an end to the trial against Doda, making a point of saying that it was not the emperor’s intercession but rather their own decision to do so.27 24  ÖSta, KA, KM Präs, Jahr 1874, Aktenzahl 9-2/2. 25  ÖSta, KA, KM Präs, Jahr 1874, Aktenzahl 9-2/2, FML Scudier’s note to the War Ministry. 26  ÖStA, KA, Militär Kanzlei Seiner Majestät des Kaisers (MKSM), Signatur 562, Titel 15–29, Jahr 1887, Document number 20-1/ 13-1. 27  Marin, “Reforming the Better to Preserve”; Marin, “The Formation and Allegiance of the Romanian Military Elite,” 208–214.

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Doda’s acquaintance Feldmarschalleutnant Michael von Trapsia followed a different path to generalcy. As he did not qualify for a place in the Wiener Neustadt Academy, he attended the flotilla school in Klosterneuburg and eventually achieved higher military education at the technical military academy in Olmütz (Olomouc).28 He reached the rank of Feldmarschalleutnant (Titel und Charakter) upon his retirement in 1893. He expressed his views regarding the use of languages in Hungary in a more private way, in the form of scattered notes and aphorisms, which were only published by his relatives posthumously. During his active time in the army he made financial contributions to Romanian-language newspapers. Just like his contemporary and fellow general Trajan Doda, he advised against the choice of controversial newspaper titles and encouraged more moderate formulations.29 On a personal level, he insisted on having the German spelling of his name altered back to the original Romanian spelling as shown by his birth records. His military record thus lists for the year 1870 a request for a change of spelling from the Germanized form of Trapscha to the Romanian spelling Trapsia: “In accordance with the birth certificate submitted under no. 520 in 1869, the Romanian spelling of Trapsia is to be used instead of Trapscha, the pronunciation remaining the same.”30 Of particular interest are General Trapsia’s reflections on language use within a state, which are available in a collection of aphorisms, Aforisme, cugetări şi reflecsiuni / Aphorismen, Gedanken und Reflexionen [Aphorisms, thoughts, and reflections], published in Temesvár after the general’s death in 1896 and signed M.v.T. (Michael von Trapsia). These personal reflections are for the most part generic and philosophical in character and, as they took the form of sporadic private notes published posthumously, were not intended for a particular target audience. In the published edition the majority of these notes are bilingual. There are, however, a few passages (such as the one about Magyarization and the piece of poetry quoted below) that were printed only in German with no Romanian counterpart (and with no explanation for this inconsistency). In Trapsia’s notes, there are generic statements referring to the significance of language and its potential for exclusion: “Language is what a people holds dearest.” And: “In a land in which one does not know the language, one remains 28  ÖStA, KA, Qualificationslisten 3532 (Trappl-Traun): Michael von Trapsia. 29  George Cipăianu and Mihail Dan, Corespondenţa lui Vincenţiu Babeş (Scrisori primite) [The correspondence of Vincenţiu Babeş (Received letters)] (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Dacia, 1976), 236. 30  “Laut No. 520 ex. 1869 deposirt. vorgelegtem Taufscheine statt Trapscha ist nach der romänischen Orthografie Trapsia jedoch mit der früheren Aussprache zu schreiben.” ÖStA, KA, Qualificationslisten 3532 (Trappl-Traun), Michael von Trapsia, UnterabtheilungsGrundbuchblatt 1893.

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always a stranger. They who build on the ignorance of a people are always mistaken and lead themselves and the others to ruin.”31 A few of Trapsia’s reflections are explicit critiques of Magyarization relying on the general’s own experience: “7/10 1884: In Caransebeș, a place where there are no Hungarian inhabitants, a boy was locked up for an hour because, as he was telling a story in Hungarian, he used the future instead of the past tense. The mind revolts against such abuse.” And again one week later: 17/10 1887: When I was in Caransebeș, my nine-year-old niece Adriana sang to me a very pretty song in Hungarian. I asked her if she understood the lyrics. She answered, smiling ashamed: No! Well, haven’t they explained it to you? said I, and the answer was again “No!” This fact filled me with the deepest sadness. This was then Hungarian culture! There will come a time when the curse of this affair will erupt with a vengeance and will destroy this delusion, which has delivered a whole generation to ignorance.32 In direct reference to the cultural chicanery increasingly practiced in the nonMagyar regions of dualist Hungary, Trapsia voiced his disbelief at these prac­ tices, no doubt being all the more aware of them for being able to compare them with the much better conditions in the Austrian half of the monarchy, where he chose to live after his retirement (he eventually settled in Graz): “The violent destruction of culture is unbelievable and yet true in nineteenth-century

31  “Einem Volke ist das theuerste seine Sprache. In einem Lande, in welchem man die Sprache nicht kennt, bleibt man stets fremd. Wer auf die Unwissenheit eines Volkes baut, irrt stets und führt sich und andere ins Verderben.” M.v.T. [Michael von Trapsia], Aforisme, Cugetări şi Reflecsiuni / Aphorismen, Gedanken und Reflexionen (Temesvár: Buchdruckerei Heinrich Uhrmann, 1896), 46, 74. 32  “Im Jahre 1884 7/10: In Caransebeș, ein Ort, der keinen magyarischen Einwohner zählt, wurde ein Knabe, weil in der Geschichte, die er magyarisch hersagen soll, ein Zeitwort statt in der vergangenen Zeit in der Zukunftsform setzte, eine Stunde eingesperrt. Der Verstand bäumt sich beim Wahrnehmen solcher Missbräuche.”    “17/10 1887: Als ich in Caransebeș war, sang mir meine 9-jährige Nichte Adriana ein recht hübsches Liedchen mit ungarischem Text vor; ich frug sie, ob sie den Text verstünde; da antwortete sie beschämt lächelnd: Nein! Ja, hat man Dir dies nicht erklärt, sagte ich und die Antwort war wieder nein! Mit tiefster Trauer erfüllte mich diese Thatsache, und das soll magyarische Cultur sein! Möge nicht einst der Fluch über diesen Vorgang in Wuth ausbrechen und zertrümmere dieses Truggebilde, welches eine ganze Generation der Unwissenheit überliefert.” M.v.T. [Michael von Trapsia], Aforisme, Cugetări şi Reflecsiuni / Aphorismen, Gedanken und Reflexionen, 50, 80.

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Central Europe. Hungarians have destroyed the schools of the non-Hungarians in Hungary and taught the people to disobey the law.”33 In keeping with his views on the importance of language for a community, FML Trapsia included in his will a donation of 5,000 Florins with a view to setting up a confessional Romanian Orthodox school for girls. He presented this donation as the “ardent wish of a loyal son of the Romanian nation” and stipulated in great detail the nature and structure of education in the future school, among other things insisting that the language of instruction should be Romanian: The principles on which the confessional Romanian girls’ school is to be built are the following: 1. The girls’ school will have four grades. Only girls above the age of ten will be received into the first grade. 2. Instruction will be based on traditional-religious principles and will pursue the goal of raising housewives endowed with sufficient knowledge of natural sciences, history, geography, and Romanian national literature, as well as teaching them handcrafts and, of course, music, wherever possible. 3. The language of instruction should be exclusively Romanian. On this condition I lay particular emphasis and I urge all Romanians who love their nation to insist on its fulfillment.34

33  “Mit Gewalt Cultur zerstören ist im 19. Jahrhundert in Mittel-Europa unglaublich und doch wahr. Magyaren zerstörten die guten Schulen der Nicht-magyaren in Ungarn und lehrten dem Volke die Nichtachtung der Gesetze.” Ibid., 52. 34  “Die Grundsätze für die zu errichtende confessionelle rumänische Mädchenschule sind folgende:   1. Die Mädchenschule soll vierclassig sein. In die erste Classe sollen nur Mädchen über zehn Jahre alt, aufgenommen werden.   2. Der Unterricht soll auf sittlich religiöser Grundlage beruhen und das Ziel verfolgen, praktische und genügende Kenntnisse aus den Naturwissenschaften, der Geschichte, Geographie und rumänischer National-Literatur verstehende Hausfrauen heranzubilden, Handarbeiten und wenn möglich Musik selbstverständlich.   3. Die Unterrichtssprache soll nur die rumänische sein. Auf diese Bedingung lege ich einen Hauptwerth, und ersuche ich jeden seine Nation liebenden Rumänen die Erfüllung zu fordern.”   Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv, Graz, Signatur BG, Graz I D 837/1896 (Many thanks to Dr. Elisabeth Schöggl-Ernst for her help in locating this material); see also Liviu Groza, Din viaţa şi activitatea Generalului Mihail Trapşa [From the life and activity of general Mihail Trapşa] (Lugoj, 1995), 106.

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Trapsia’s support for his native language stemmed not only from his own national allegiance but also from a deeply embedded sense of justice and the conviction that civilian and military relations in a state functioned like communicating vessels. They conditioned each other and depended on one another, to the extent that an endemic sense of injustice on the home front would inevitably have repercussions on the motivation of the troops: In a state where the general sense of justice is nurtured so as to achieve the earlier mentioned valuable equality, this is also transferred onto the soldiers and differs only in a more careful cultivation of honor—this palladium of the soldier class. If this direction does not predominate in the state, then the shadows of this tendency are cast on the soldier class as well and destroy their sense of justice … The more rampant the destruction of the sense of justice, the more the living conditions of the state fade, its armies are all the more easily defeated, and with their defeat the state is shattered … 12 o’clock at night, 21./1. 1878. A difficult day.35 Trapsia was not—could not be—a rabid nationalist. He himself was the product of a bilingual system, was perfectly integrated in the Habsburg imperial system, and was a successful military professional. His critique of contemporary inequities regarding language use sat side by side with effusive, kaisertreu poetry of the type quoted below, which showed a genuine, if rather utopian, sense of loyalty to the imperial fatherland: Earthly Fate dictated, that the Austrian Double Eagle Should unfold its wings equally over its multitude of peoples. Then brother holds out the hand to sister, And stronger than ever is our Fatherland! 35  “In einem Staate, wo das allgemeine Rechtsgefühl zur Erreichung des eben früher erwähnten und würdigen Gleichgewichtes gepflegt wird, überträgt es sich auch auf den Soldaten und unterscheidet sich bei diesem nur durch die sorgfältigere Pflege der Ehre diesem Palladium des Soldatenstandes. Herrscht aber nicht diese Richtung im Staate überhaupt, so fallen auch die Schlagschatten dieser Tendenz auf den Soldatenstand und vernichten das Rechtsgefühl in demselben. […] Je mehr die Vernichtung des Rechtsgefühls um sich greift, desto mehr schwindet die Lebensbedingung des Staates, desto leichter werden dessen Armeen geschlagen und mit ihrer Niederlage der Staat zertrümmert. […] 12 Uhr nach Mitternacht 21./1. 1878. ein schwerer Tag.” M.v.T. [Michael von Trapsia], Aforisme, Cugetări şi Reflecsiuni / Aphorismen, Gedanken und Reflexionen, 75–76.

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Then warmth and air is everywhere and our Fatherland is happier than ever.36 One generation later, another staunch supporter of the Romanian community in southern Hungary was FML Nikolaus Cena (FML Titel und Charakter 1908). Abundantly decorated (he was awarded the Kriegsmedaille, MilitärVerdienstkreuz, Militär-Dienstzeichen für Officiere III Classe, Ritterkreuz des Franz Joseph-Ordens, and Jubiläums-Erinnerungs-Medaille),37 he was at the same time proudly aware of his military status and ethnic identity. As he wrote in a letter to Valeriu Braniște, a Romanian national leader in the Banat: I am a soldier, an officer, and, God willing, in a future war once again a commander of troops; above all, I am a true Romanian, I do not run like a coward before a fight. Had our ancestors always fled like cowards from the battlefield, then would our nation still be worthy to exist? Would Johann Hunyady have become, without us Romanians, the famous man who is celebrated nowadays?38 One of his contemporaries, Coriolan Buracu, an Orthodox priest from Mehadia in southern Hungary, Cena’s native place, recalled the general to be a supporter of the local Romanian confessional school, the only school in which Romanian was used as a language of instruction. There, he sat in on classes and gave books and prizes to meritorious students. He was also a member of Romanian cultural institutions such as Astra (Transylvanian Association for Romanian Culture and Literature) and Fondul de teatru român (Romanian Theater Fund), and he assiduously collected Roman artifacts from the surroundings of his

36  “Das Erden Schicksal walte,/ Dass Oesterreich Doppel-Aar/ Die Flügel gleich entfalte/ Ueber seine Völkerschaar./ Dann reicht Bruder der Schwester die Hand,/ Und kräftig wie nie, ist unser Vaterland!/ Dann streicht Wärme und Luft überall/ Und glücklich wie nie ist unser Vaterland.” Ibid., 80. 37  Cena Qualificationsliste—ÖStA, Kriegsarchiv, Qualificationsliste, Karton Nummer 338, (Cejnek-Cencur). 38  “Ich bin Soldat, Offizier, in einem künftigen Kriege—so Gott will—wieder Truppenführer, vor allem bin ich echter Romäne [sic], ich fliehe nicht wie ein Feigling vor einem Kampf. Wenn unsere Vorfahren vom Kampffelde stets feige geflohen wären, wäre da unsere Nation noch wert zu existieren? Wäre ohne uns Romänen Hunyady Johann jener berühmte Mann geworden als der er heute gefeiert wird?” Gh. Iancu and Valeria Căliman, eds., Valeriu Branişte, Corespondenţă (1902–1910), vol. 3 (Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1989), 194.

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native place of birth (Roman ancestry being one of the mainstays of Romanian national discourse).39 His stance as regards the use of Hungarian by the non-Hungarians was not dismissive but rather utilitarian. He looked upon learning Hungarian as a necessity. If his predecessor, FML Trapsia, had mused on the alienation of a good part of the population of Hungary through ignorance of the state language, Cena recommended the acquisition of Hungarian as a vital tool in the political battle for national recognition: We are no friends of the Hungarian parliamentary parties, but supporters of the National Party. We wish that the Romanian nation be recognized as a political entity, but are not so obtuse as to want that no Romanian should learn the Hungarian language. On the contrary, we wish that they should learn and master this language even better than most Hungarians themselves and, this way, acquire a weapon so as to beat the Hungarians on their own ground, so as to increase our sources of income and thereby strengthen our welfare and financial power, so that we are well equipped when the crucial hour comes.40 A contemporary of Cena’s, GM Alexander Lupu, viewed language in a less instrumental way. Lupu did not originate from the Military Border proper but he benefited from instruction in Military Border schools, which started him off on a military career. He attained the rank of Generalmajor in 1908 with Titel und Charakter. Unlike Doda and Cena, but similarly to Trapsia, he chose to settle in the Austrian half of the monarchy after his retirement: he lived in Vienna until his death in 1925. His involvement in Romanian cultural politics in the empire testifies to his conception of the nation as a combination of language and religion (Orthodoxy). Lupu was the one who set in motion the bureaucratic machine for building a Romanian Orthodox chapel in Vienna: 39  Coriolan Buracu, Muzeul General Nicolae Cena în Băile Herculane şi Cronica Mehadiei [The museum “General Nicolae Cena” in Herculane and the Chronicle of Mehadia] (TurnuSeverin, Tipografia şi Libraria Ramuri, 1924), 4–5, 7. 40  “Denn wir sind keine Freunde der magyarischen Parliamentsparteien, sondern Anhänger der Nationalpartei. Wir wollen die roumänische Nation als politisches Individuum anerkannt wissen, sind aber nicht so verbohrt zu wollen, das kein Romäne die magyarische Sprache lernen soll, im Gegenteil, dass sie diese Sprache noch besser lernen und beherrschen sollen, als die meisten Magyaren selbst, um damit eine Waffe zu Gewinnen, die Magyaren auf ihrem ureignen Boden zu schlagen, um die Zahl der eigenen Erwerbsquellen zu vermehren und damit unseren Wohlstand, unsere finanzielle Kraft zu stärken, so das wir in der Stunde der Entscheidung gerüstet dastehen.” Iancu and Căliman, eds., Valeriu Branişte, 193.

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After ascertaining that the parishioners of the Viennese Greek-Orthodox churches, namely, the Greek, Russian, and Serbian church, spoke Romanian more than any other language, I decided to draw up a list of all the Romanians in Vienna. In 1898 I extracted all the Romanian addresses from the Lehmann directory; I then sent the young people from România jună41 throughout Vienna to verify the Romanian identity of these families. I personally went to Catholic monasteries to find out how many Romanian girls there were there; I then requested from the Schulrat the name of all the Romanian Greek-Orthodox female students enrolled at secondary and national [poporale] schools in Vienna.42 Lupu explicitly connected this initiative of organizing the Romanian community in Vienna to the imperial jubilee, on which occasion he set up an Association for the Foundation of the Romanian Greek Oriental Church in Vienna (Rumänischer griechisch-orientalischer Kaiser-Jubiläums-Kirchenbauund Kirchengründungsverein in Wien).43 Was there a connection between the religion of these generals and their involvement in national cultural politics? Three out of the four examined generals were of Greek Orthodox faith. However, Trajan Doda, who was perhaps the most famous and definitely the most publicly involved of them all, was Catholic (about a third of all high-ranking officers who originated from the Banat Military Border were Roman Catholic). It does seem that Orthodox affiliation created special bonds and provided occasions for meetings and cultural celebrations among Romanian secular and military elites in the empire, but it was definitely not the only bonding element. For instance, a Catholic like Doda had very close connections to Romanian political leaders in Hungary, such as Alexandru Mocsonyi and Vincențiu Babeș, both of whom were Orthodox. Michael von Trapsia, himself of Orthodox faith, took his national cue from, and was in awe of, George Barițiu, a prominent Greek-Catholic Romanian 41  România jună (Young Romania) was a Romanian literary society set up in Vienna in the latter half of the nineteenth century that brought together Romanian students and intellectuals from the empire and from Romania. 42  Marin Branişte, “Comunitatea ortodoxă română din Viena: 200 de ani de la recunoaşterea ei de către Împăratul Iosif al II-lea şi 80 de ani de la întemeierea actualului său lăcaş de închinare” [The Romanian Orthodox Community in Vienna: 200 years since its recognition by Emperor Joseph II and 80 years since the foundation of its current church building], in Almanahul Parohiei Ortodoxe Române din Viena [The yearbook of the Romanian Orthodox Parish in Vienna], vol. 26 (Vienna: Editat de Parohia Ortodoxă Română din Viena, 1987), 64. 43  Victor Lăzărescu, “Un bănăţean promotor al vieţii sociale româneşti din Viena: Generalul Alexandru Lupu” [A Banat promoter of Romanian social life in Vienna], in ibid., 90.

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national leader from Transylvania. This was in keeping with the confessionally eclectic character of the Romanian national movement in the empire. 4

Language Use

As we have seen above, these four officers were directly involved with national politics and each in their own way contributed to the welfare of their national community. But how did they themselves make use of the languages of the empire, and of their own native tongue? What languages did they have, what languages did they communicate in, and under what circumstances? According to their military records, all of these officers were at least bilingual, with various degrees of knowledge of other languages for professional purposes. Trajan Doda had five languages listed in his military record, the first four (Romanian, German, Italian, and French) being listed as fluent, and additionally some Serbian and English.44 Michael von Trapsia spoke German, Romanian, and Italian fluently, had a good command of French, and spoke some Hungarian.45 Nikolaus Cena had fluent German and Romanian,46 as did his contemporary Alexander Lupu.47 Their official correspondence was in German, while (as far as one can ascertain from extant documents) private exchanges with fellow Romanians were alternatively in Romanian or German, more often than not a combination of the two (Romanian interlarded with German phrases). It is telling that the language in which Trapsia wrote his poetry and a good part of his aphorisms, and the language used by Cena in his scholarly communications for the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, was German. With the exception of Trapsia, whose military records list a smattering of Hungarian, none of the other officers spoke any Hungarian. The officers described above represent only a very small sample of the officers of Romanian nationality within the k.u.k. army. This is inevitably due to the limited source base available. There is, however, some scanty secondary source information relating to other high-ranking officers of Romanian origin (FML Theodor Seracin and Oberst David Urs de Margina), which, although not explicit on their views regarding the language question in the monarchy, does point to their involvement, in various degrees, with the life of the Romanian 44  ÖStA, KA, Qualificationslisten 471 (Dobrzensky-Doell), “Individual-Beschreibung über nachbenannten Stabsoffizier für das Jahr 1858—Major Trajan Doda.” 45  ÖStA, KA, Qualificationsliste 3532 Trappl-Traun, Jahrgang 1869: Michael Ritter von Trapsia. 46  ÖStA, KA, Qualificationsliste, Karton Nummer 338, (Cejnek-Cencur). 47  ÖStA, KA, Qualificationslisten 1842 (Luoni—Luria), Jahrgang 1890.

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community in the empire. FML Seracin appears in the minutes of the Viennese society România jună as an attendee of Orthodox services and Romanian cultural anniversaries, whilst Colonel Urs de Margina is credited with setting up funding for meritorious Romanian students in southern Transylvania.48 There are many more Romanian generals for whom we do not have any extant testimonies. Many of them were probably “married” to their military profession and, if they did have thoughts on the language question in the monarchy, they kept these to themselves or did not feel called upon or have the opportunity to express or act on them. In the absence of further evidence, I would venture the hypothesis that their views depended greatly on their family and social connections, their professional and personal experiences, and their relationship to the Romanian community in the empire. 5 Conclusion The officers considered in the present contribution were advocates of multilingualism as a strategy of inclusion and imperial cohesion, as well as of survival as a nation. Perhaps the most important feature of their outlook on language and nationality was that they objected to monolingualism, whether this meant Magyarization or withdrawal into one’s native language. In all of the cases under consideration a symbiosis between military and civilian life is evident: Doda took his cue from the language policies of the Military Border, Trapsia viewed military and civilian life as communicating vessels, Lupu used his military contacts to secure a priest for the newly set up Romanian Orthodox Chapel in Vienna, and Cena viewed language politics as a battlefield. What comes out of this exploration of military views on the use of languages in the empire is that language acquisition was a must for these officers, a pathway to education and, in their cases, to exalted social standing. The need for linguistic coherence, that is, for a single language of legislation and administration, was not denied by any of the examined officers, and at least a couple of them asserted this firmly in their personal testimonies. What all of these officers seem to have objected to were language hierarchies, whereby one language took precedence over and stifled another. Language was viewed not only as a sine qua non for the preservation of national identity, but also as an instrument of inclusion and exclusion. In these officers’ view, languages represented opportunities for social ascent as well as for preserving national identity, which was all part of a broader feedback loop between national identity and imperial loyalty. This 48  Marin, “The Formation and Allegiance of the Romanian Military Elite,” 390.

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Marin

feedback loop was typical of Grenzer mentalities, and it is therefore unsurprising to find it informing the linguistic outlook of k.u.k. officers who originated from the Military Border. Finally, what this contribution has sought to show is that there were military figures in the common army who were concerned with the language issue in the empire, and that they put forward critical opinions and sensible views on the matter that did not go against the grain of their military standing, but rather were derived organically thereof.

Chapter 8

German and Romanian in Town Governments of Dualist Transylvania and the Banat Ágoston Berecz In this chapter, I will document the presence of the Romanian and German languages in the written administration of Transylvanian and Banat towns with Romanian and German majorities under Dualism. Relying mainly on archival material, it is possible to demarcate the domains where the two languages were typically used and the functions reserved for Hungarian, and to identify possible changes over time. My survey should not be taken as representative for other regions and other minority languages of Dualist Hungary. Town governments controlled by (German-speaking) Transylvanian Saxons and Romanians seem to have been able to make an exceptionally wide use of the legal space for local tongues, whereas a combination of voluntary and enforced Magyarization and thus a rapid shift of official life to Hungarian was the rule elsewhere. State elites in contemporary Europe may have wished to present their official or de facto state languages as enjoying universal recognition across their allolingual peripheries. In practice, however, when they tried to enforce its use on local governments, they usually did so with caution and sometimes with remarkable sloppiness. Thus Russian authorities found it easy to introduce Russian into town halls of Congress Poland once they governed them via appointed officials, but the same attempt foundered in Riga on the resistance of German city fathers.1 In the parts of Alsace-Lorraine/Elsaß-Lothringen annexed to the German Empire in 1871, French-speaking communes were temporarily exempted from the need of using German in their transactions. The authorities later periodically surveyed local people’s knowledge of German 1  Anders Henriksson, “Riga: Growth, Conflict, and the Limitations of Good Government,” in The City in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Michael Hamm (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 179, 189, and 192–3; Stephen D. Corrsin, “Warsaw: Poles and Jews in a Conquered City,” ibid., 135–6; Edward C. Thaden, “The Russian Government,” in Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855–1914, ed. idem (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 58; Tomasz Kamusella, The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 393; Darius Staliūnas, Making Russians: Meaning and Practice of Russification in Lithuania and Belarus after 1863 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 189.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004407978_009

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and introduced the language wherever they saw fit, but over half of the 423 communes initially exempted were still administered in French in 1914.2 Homogenizing linguistic policies were adopted on the provincial level in post-1869 Galicia. Most Ruthenian (Ukrainian) settlements there transacted their business in Polish and only Lwów (Ľviv/Lemberg), Biala (Biała) and Brod (Brody/Brodi) did (partly or entirely) in German, the latter thanks to a ruling by the Imperial Court.3 In the remaining parts of the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy, which were emphatically uncommitted to a state nationalism, linguistic homogenization was as a rule outsourced to leaders of local demographic or legal majorities, whose ingenuity in bullying minorities easily outstripped that of legislators and state bureaucracies.4 In plurilingual cities, where local politics was regularly split along national lines, municipal leaders sought to preserve their power by maintaining or “improving” the ethnolinguistic balance in favor of their own groups. In this pursuit, they combined the most vicious and narrow-minded policies from the toolkit of state nationalisms, from the administrative purging of linguistic landscapes to the selective granting of residence rights.5 By regulating the language of gravestones, some of them crossed a line that was out of bounds even to the most oppressive states of that time.6 1

The Legal Framework and the Political Environment

Section 20 of the Hungarian 1868 Law of Nationalities affirmed the right of “communes” (at the time, all local governments with the exception of royal 2  Paul Lévy, Histoire linguistique d’Alsace et de Lorraine, vol. 2, De la Révolution française à 1918 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1929), 347–8, 355–7, 368, 375 and 432. 3  Jan Fellerer, Mehrsprachigkeit im galizischen Verwaltungswesen, 1772–1914: Eine historischsoziolinguistische Studie zum Polnischen und Ruthenischen (Ukrainischen) (Cologne: Böhlau, 2005), 135, 150–1; Gerald Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten in der Verfassung und Verwaltung Österreichs: 1848–1918 (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1985), 116. 4  Lévy, Histoire linguistique d’Alsace et de Lorraine, vol. 2, 237; Jean-François Chanet, L’École républicaine et les petites patries (Paris: Aubier, 1996), 210; Thaden, The Russian Government, 58. 5  Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten; Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914, 2nd rev. ed. (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2006), 111. 6  Michaela Wolf, Die vielsprachige Seele Kakaniens: Übersetzen und Dolmetschen in der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2012), 125; Alfred Manussi Montesole, “Die Adrialänder,” in Das Nationalitätenrecht des altes Österreich, ed. Karl Gottfried Hugelmann (Vienna: Braumüller, 1934), 629; Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten, 115.

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free cities) to choose the language of their internal administration and the minutes of their council meetings, a right first granted by the October Diploma of 1860. Immediately after József Eötvös’s death in 1871, however, Magyar politicians began to contest this provision by interpreting it as an interim measure until local leaders learned the state language, and harped on about the mission of local administration in spreading the knowledge of Hungarian, an idea that went back at least to István Gorove’s book from 1842.7 In 1868, free royal cities constituted the highest category of urban settlements. Together with counties, they were required to conduct their internal administration in Hungarian under the 1868 Nationalities Law. For practical purposes, Act LII of 1870 replaced the category of free royal cities with that of törvényhatósági jogú város. This term most aptly translates non-literally as “town with county rights,” and just like “county borough” in contemporary England, the Hungarian name brings into relief their similar standing to counties. More important changes happened in 1876, when the majority of these towns, including the towns of the earlier Saxon Land (Fundus Regius), were demoted to the lower category of “towns with settled councils” (rendezett tanácsú városok), and so-called administrative committees were set up in the remaining, usually larger towns to bring them under tighter government control. Act XXI of 1886 further diminished the autonomy of cities with county rights by broadening the power of prefects as representatives of the central government in Budapest. Had there arisen a strong movement in any of these cities for reintroducing a local tongue into written administration, these adjustments doomed it to failure. Throughout the period, however, there existed a vastly greater number of towns with settled councils than towns with county rights, and all my examples fall into the former category. Moreover, Gusztáv Beksics was apparently correct in insinuating that the Saxon-led Brassó (Brașov/ Kronstadt) avoided applying for the higher status for no other reason than to shield itself from government interference and from the Magyarization of its public life.8 A multifactor study of Hungary’s urban hierarchy in 1910 confirms that it stood out by any measure from the category of towns with settled councils.9

7  István Gorove, Nemzetiség [Nationality] (Pesten: Heckenast, 1842), 47–49. 8  Gusztáv Beksics, Közigazgatásunk reformja és nemzeti politikánk [The reform of our administration and our national politics] (Budapest: Grill, 1891), 104–7. 9  Pál Beluszky and Róbert Győri, The Hungarian Urban Network in the Beginning of the 20th Century (Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies of Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2005), 103.

138 Table 1

Berecz Legal Categories of Local Governments in Hungary after 1876

– towns with county rights (törvényhatósági jogú város) – towns with settled councils (rendezett tanácsú város) – with Magyar majorities – with non-Magyar majorities—narrower franchise – large communes (nagyközség) – small communes (kisközség)

urban settlements communes

In all local councils, half of the council members were the so-called virilists, that is, the largest local taxpayers, and the other half were elected, usually with a much broader franchise than either parliamentary or county elections. Unlike in the Austrian curial system, each adult male resident and corporate entity paying local taxes had the right to cast a vote on an equal basis. Every three years, half of the elected members were up for election, each serving a six-year term. As a rule of thumb, every one hundred voters elected one council member. Office-holders were elected by town councils for six years. In a series of towns with settled councils, the citizens did not enjoy the broader franchise enacted in 1871. With an ingenious legislative sleight of hand, Prime Minister Kálmán Tisza practically set the more restrictive, taxbased parliamentary franchise for the municipal elections of forty-seven towns, all but one from Upper and Eastern Hungary and typically populated by non-Magyar majorities (section 5 of Act XX of 1876). The seven Saxon towns of the earlier Fundus Regius were added to this tacit urban category of towns with settled councils but with a restricted franchise the same year (under Act XXXIII of 1876, chapter 1, section 2), and later also Déva (Deva/Diemrich) and Lugoj (Lugosch/Lugos). Thereby the narrower parliamentary franchise came into effect at the local elections of all the area’s minority-majority towns with settled councils, with the exception of Tekendorf (Teke/Teaca) and Vinga, which however soon downgraded themselves to communes.10 Clearly, one of Tisza’s goals with the special treatment of these towns was to secure the 10  It is unclear to me how the parliamentary franchise was extended to the municipal elections of Déva and Lugoj. For the former, it is attested to by Gusztáv Thirring, ed., A magyar városok statisztikai évkönyve [Statistical yearbook of Hungarian cities] (Budapest: Magyar Városok Országos Kongresszusa, 1912), 683; while in the latter, it was already in force before the town regained its urban status; cf. Krassó-Szörényi Lapok 28 April 1887.

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leading position of the most often relatively prosperous local Magyar minorities, while the inclusion of Saxon towns may be regarded as a compensation to the urban Saxon elite for their loss of territorial autonomy the same year. It is important to note here that Saxons only made up the ethnic majority in some of these towns, and my usage of the term “Saxon town” only refers to Saxons’ traditional political and economic sway there. With the exception of Orăștie (Szászváros/Broos), virilism and the exclusive franchise allowed local Saxons to continue monopolizing municipal politics. Thus, the same measure that was meant to help local Magyar minorities could in the same way benefit Saxons in Transylvania. Romanian town dwellers, with a sizeable presence in all Saxon towns, were more shortchanged in this setup than Magyars, who lived in considerable number only in Brassó and Orăștie when these legislations were enacted. In 1873, the Transylvanian Saxon town of Schäßburg (Sighișoara/Segesvár) filed a petition to the Budapest Parliament protesting the Magyarization of county administration. Antal Molnár, MP for Szamosújvár (Gherla) and appointed rapporteur on the petition, retorted that he “could not imagine anything more provocative than when a mayor who knows Hungarian [allusion to Joseph Gull, Molnár’s fellow MP and mayor of Schäßburg] signs his name as ‘Bürgermeister.’”11 By the 1890s, the Magyar public might have felt genuine bewilderment that town halls could conduct their affairs in languages other than Hungarian. It must be emphasized that the official use of minority languages had rapidly lost ground in settlements with urban status. In Upper Hungary, several town councils still kept German minutes in the years after 1867, but they shifted to Hungarian before the turn of the century, partly out of city elders’ enthusiasm for Magyarization and partly giving in to informal pressure.12 After that point, it seems the written use of minority languages in urban administration tapered to only Transylvania and the Banat. 2

The Towns in Focus

As it is fairly straightforward to conclude that there was little space for the written use of minority languages in towns that were dominantly Magyar, I will 11  Képviselőházi Napló 1872/75, vol. 8, 205. 12  Eleonóra Babejová, Fin-de-siècle Pressburg: Conflict & Cultural Coexistence in Bratislava, 1897–1914 (Boulder, CO.: East European Monographs, 2003), 38; Erich Fausel, Das Zipser Deutschtum: Geschichte und Geschicke einer deutschen Sprachinsel im Zeitalter des Nationalismus (Jena: Fischer, 1927), 59; Béla Szontágh, “Dobsina” [Dobschau/Dobšiná], in Gömör-Kishont vármegye [Gömör-Kishont County], ed. Samu Borovszky (Budapest: Apollo Irodalmi Társaság, s. a. [1903]), 137.

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confine myself to towns with non-Magyar majorities in Transylvania and the Banat, even though town councils where Magyars turned into a majority during the Dualist Period would also hold a special interest. Among the latter, the local council of Déva was dominated by Romanians in the years after 1867, but as Magyar council members slowly outnumbered Romanians, even the Romanian version of the minutes was soon discontinued.13 In neighbouring Hunedoara (Vajdahunyad/Hunnedeng), the first Magyar mayor was voted into office at the local elections following the 1910 census, the first to yield a Magyar majority. As the more restrictive franchise was in force in the town, this should be seen rather a suggestive coincidence than a casual connection.14 Temeswar15 (Temesvár/Timișoara/Temišvar), although obliged to Hungarian internal administration by virtue of its county rights, could also present an interesting case, but only small portions of its archive are available from the period. The data that I will present largely come from two municipal archives that have survived intact and are accessible in the county branches of the National Archives of Romania (those of Caransebeș and Bistritz) and four (those of Orăștie, Sebeș, Lugoj and Brassó) that are only partially extant. All these were towns with settled councils and all of them also operated on the more restrictive franchise. As far as the fragmentary nature of the material permitted, I sampled each archive at equal time intervals and according to the various document types. Regarding the domains in which little material is available, I will present my data in detail. Brassó (Brașov/Kronstadt), Bistritz (Bistrița/Beszterce), and Sebeș (Mühlbach/Szászsebes) are examples of towns dominated by the Saxon elite. Although Saxons were not even the largest ethnolinguistic group in Brassó, seventy-seven virilist and sixty-six elected Saxon members sat in the town council in 1894, alongside twenty-nine Romanian and five Magyar elected members, and twelve Magyar and eleven Romanian virilists.16 The town’s civic employees were also predominantly Saxons: 203 in 1910, alongside only thirty-six Magyars, 13  Lajos Réthi, “Déva”, in Hunyadvármegyei Almanach 1910 [Hunyad County almanac], ed. Károly Dénes (Déva: self-published, 1910), 131. 14  Ioachim Lazăr, “Un primar român al Hunedoarei, avocatul George Danilă (1844)” [A Romanian mayor of Hunedoara, George Danilă (1844)], Corviniana 1 (1995): 150–1; Vajdahunyad és vidéke 7 July 1906. Parts of the Hunedoara municipal archive have survived, but the fond was being reordered during my stay in the Hunedoara County branch of the Romanian state archives in summer 2013. 15  At the time, this was a more common spelling of the city’s name in German than Temeschwar. 16  Emil Rombauer, “A brassói m. k. áll. főreáliskola alapitásának és eddigi működésének története” [History of the founding and operation of the Hungarian Royal State Realgymnasium of Brassó/Brașov/Kronstadt], in A Brassói magyar kir. állami főreáliskolának

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thirty-one Romanians, and twenty-eight of other nationality.17 In the higher echelons, the only non-Saxons in the era were the few Magyars appointed by the county and a Romanian town veterinarian.18 Hungarian was only introduced as the third language of the town council meetings’ minutes, sometime between 1903 and 1907.19 In Bistritz, only nineteen of the 122 town council members were not Saxon in 1910, and most of whom were likely virilists.20 Whatever scheme the town leadership enacted to achieve such a result, all sixty-nine new members that the two constituencies of the town elected to the council in 1913 were Saxons.21 Sebeș became the first historically Saxon town in Transylvania to elect a Romanian mayor in the person of Simeon Balomiri in 1877, during a brief period when the Hungarian government tried to play out Romanians against Saxons; the headmaster of the Saxon Untergymnasium (four-year, humanistic lower secondary school) insinuated that the prefect had doctored the electoral roll, adding more than a hundred poor Romanians, including several wanted criminals.22 When Saxon, Magyar, and Romanian members first reached near-equality in the town council of Orăștie in 1889, they struck a formal agreement to maintain this balance both in the council and among municipal officials. The agreement, which had to be renewed every six years, also regulated language use: for the sake of convenience, the council meetings were to be minuted in Hungarian, but any important motion or request from a council member had to be put down in the original language as well. To my knowledge, the statute of the town from 1900 was the only such local act in contemporary Hungary that set language qualifications for all municipal officials and required them to speak all three local languages.23 The arrangement between the three national kilenczedik évi értesitője: az 1893–94. tanév [The ninth yearbook of the Hungarian Royal State Realgymnasium of Brassó; the 1893/4 school year] (Brassó, 1894), 3–104. 17  Ion Dumitraşcu and Mariana Maximescu, O istorie a Brașovului (din cele mai vechi timpuri până la începutul secolului XX) [A history of Brașov/Brassó/Kronstadt: from the most remote times until the beginning of the twentieth century] (Brașov: Phoenix, 2002), 96. 18  Friedrich Stenner, Die Beamten der Stadt Brassó (Kronstadt) vom Anfang der städtischen Verwaltung bis auf die Gegenwart (Brassó [Kronstadt]: Schneider and Feminger, 1916). 19  Oktáv Hangay, Harcz a magyarságért! Az Alldeutsch Szövetség (All-deutscher Verband) [Struggle for Magyardom! the Pan-German League] (Kolozsvár: Gámán, 1903), 108; Brassóvármegye Hivatalos Lapja 5 (1907): 370. 20  Arhivele Naționale ale României (henceforth ANR) Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 432/1910. 21  Ibid., 58/1913, 69. 22  Johann Wolff [pseud. Karl Ludolf], Der Sprachen- und Völkerkampf in Ungarn: Ein Berichtund Mahnwort an das deutsche Volk (Leipzig: Mutze, 1882), 50; “Die Deutschenhetze in Ungarn: Aus Ungarn,” Preußische Jahrbücher 47 (1881): 44. 23   A NR Deva, Fond Primăria orașului Orăștie 2/1903.

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elites was modified in 1901, to the effect that the council would no longer nominate new members to ensure parity, but rather in proportion to the ethno­ national composition of voters. Magyar council members would occupy eleven, Romanians ten, and Saxons seven seats, which reflected the strengthening of Magyars and the decline of Saxons in the town, both in number and in wealth.24 According to the local Romanian weekly Libertatea, the Magyar and Saxon factions violated the agreement in 1909, when a vacant office was to be filled by a Romanian, but Saxon council members nominated a Saxon, and Magyar representatives nominated a certain Neumann, who was Greek Catholic by confession but otherwise was regarded as a Magyar.25 The next year, Saxon and Magyar councilors struck a new deal, this time leaving out Romanians.26 These skirmishes notwithstanding, the town hall of Orăștie implemented the most consistently pluralist language policy among the towns that I study here. Caransebeș (Karánsebes/Karansebesch), the headquarters of the Romanian Banat Border Regiment until 1872, remained a Romanian political stronghold. The internal administration of the town was carried out in German until 1876, but in 1873 the town council declared Romanian the official language of its minutes and instituted Hungarian for contact with state authorities and for answering petitions drafted in that language. Such a resolution was renewed in 1888 and again in 1905.27 In the second half of the Dualist Era, however, under a leadership conciliatory to Hungarian state nationalism, the declared precedence of Romanian became fictitious both in daily administration and in the symbolic sphere. During the first thirteen years of the twentieth century, the mayor, the town prosecutor, and the police chief submitted their yearly reports in Hungarian alongside Romanian, and in 1903 a Hungarian inscription dislodged the Romanian one on the front of the new, Venetian-style town hall, leaving a place for Romanian on the lateral façade.28 In Lugoj (Lugosch/Lugos), the Magyarization of the town hall started before it was elevated to a town with a settled council in 1889, but this process was also accompanied by a gradual Magyarization of the local citizenry. The council adopted Hungarian as a third language of the minutes while they 24  Valentin Orga, Grupul neoactivist de la Orăștie [The Neo-activist group of Orăștie] (Cluj: Argonaut, 2001), 289–91; “Dela oraș” [From the town], Libertatea 5, 18 October 1902. 25  Libertatea 1909, no. 38. 26  Ibid., 1910, no. 16. 27   A NR Caransebeș, Inventory 1624 (Primăria orașului Caransebeș); Constantin Brătescu, Orașul Caransebeș între 1865–1919: file de monografie [The town of Caransebeș between 1865 and 1919: pages of a monograph] (Caransebeș: Dalami, 2011), 22 and 25. 28   A NR Caransebeș, Inventory 1624 (Primăria orașului Caransebeș); Poganello, “Dela Caransebeș: impresii” [From Caransebeș: impressions], Drapelul 17, 30 April 1904.

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German and Romanian in Town Governments

were applying for town status and drafting the town statutes.29 It is doubtful whether the state would have accepted their request without Hungarian first introduced as an official language. During the long tenure of the first mayor, a Magyar who earlier served as the local county administrator, the town hall retained only some trappings of its trilingual policies. The German version of the minutes was discontinued while the Romanian was preserved, but the Hungarian minutes became the authoritative one. Council members still used all three languages at town meetings, Magyar town officials were willing to repeat or to summarize their oral reports in Romanian, and all announcements to the public were trilingual.30 But the outgoing correspondence and the entire internal administration shifted to Hungarian by the turn of the century, when the population was roughly divided into thirds according to native tongue, together with the great majority of the various notices and requests addressed to private parties, along with certifications and receipts.31 Table 2 Ethnolinguistic make-up and size of municipal personnel in the towns examined

1880

1910

inhabitants by native tongue

Bistritz Brassó Caransebeș Lugoj Orăștie Sebeș

Rom. 2,064 9,079 2,538 4,852 2,312 3,642

Ger. 4,954 9,599 1,552 4,533 1,427 2,086

Hun. 561 9,508 302 1,355 1,227 187

Rom. 4,470 11,786 3,916 6,227 3,821 4,980

municipal employees (1910) Ger. 5,835 10,841 2,419 6,151 1,294 2,345

Hun. 2,824 17,831 1,413 6,875 2,145 875

110 355  76 170  77  93

Source: Magyar Statisztikai Közlemények, new series, vol. 58, 40–45.

29  K  rassó-Szörényi Lapok 29 July 1886; Luminatoriulu 23 July/14 August 1886; István Iványi, Lugos rendezett tanácsú város története: adatok és vázlatok [The history of Lugoj town with settled council: data and sketches] (Szabadka: Horváth, 1907), 127. 30  Iványi, Lugos, 127. 31   A NR Timișoara, Inventories 363 and 364.

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Berecz

Municipal Personnel

In the Cisleithanian part of the monarchy, the nationalist exclusivism of municipal governments often reflected itself in their personnel policies. In 1897 the mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, came up with the principle that only Germans should be employed in the administrative machinery of his city, and in 1900, he introduced a new oath for municipal officials in which they had to pledge to preserve its “German character.”32 In delicate states of equilibrium, however, the pendulum often swung the other way, and municipal officials were suddenly required to know both or all major local languages, as happened in Prague in 1861.33 The latter sort of compromise in the area under study was represented only by Orăștie, where the three national groups in the town council not only agreed on nationality quotas for municipal officials, but all nominees had to be trilingual too. Although nationalist exclusivisms of the non-Magyar stripe met a formidable rival in Hungary in the central and county authorities, Saxon towns still managed to assert the national criterion in the selection of their personnel. More sources would be necessary to clarify this point, but it seems that this was, at least partly, thanks to Saxon town leaders’ discretion in announcing vacancies, in which the condoning attitude of county administrations had a key role to play. By placing their job advertisements in the Saxon press, Saxon towns could largely avoid unwanted intruders.34 In Orăștie, Sebeș, Caransebeș, and Lugoj, the national composition of employees was more varied. The announcement of the Sebeș town hall from 1897 to fill six new police positions is notable because it made clear that applicants conversant in the “three languages of the fatherland” would be given preference.35 In Caransebeș around the turn of the century, the vacancy of the post of town prosecutor was announced in Hungarian only and the post of archivist in a Romanian–Hungarian bilingual text, while the county administrator put an advertisement in Hungarian not only in the regional press but even in specialty journals with a countrywide circulation.36 By that time, the town’s 32  Emil Brix, Die Umgangssprachen in Altösterreich zwischen Agitation und Assimilation: Die Sprachenstatistik in den zisleithanischen Volkszählungen 1880 bis 1910 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1982), 123–4. 33  Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival, 37–9. 34  See also the Sächsisch-Regen (Szászrégen/Reghinul Săsesc) town hall’s German-only job announcement from as late as 1913; ANR Târgu Mureș, Fond Primăria orașului Reghin (inv. 258) 117/1913, 230. 35   A NR Alba Iulia, Fond Primăria orașului Sebeș (inv. 33) 28/1897, 94–107 and 139. The Lugoj town hall issued a similar call in 1901, looking for trilingual policemen; Magyar Közigazgatás 19, no. 15 (1901): 12. 36   A NR Caransebeș, Inventory 1624 (Primăria orașului Caransebeș); ibid., Fond Primăria orașului Caransebeș 147/1898–1900, 3.

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correspondence about personnel matters mostly took place in Hungarian.37 After the town council decided which applicant they wanted to accept, the new employees of the town hall on the other hand did take an oath of office in Romanian, or at least signed the Romanian text of the oath.38 4

Council Meetings

Unlike in the town council of Budweis (Budějovice), where the German majority tried several times to take away the right to speak Czech, the actual language of debate in town council meetings did not provoke conflict in Hungary (a latitude which however was not allowed in the Hungarian county assemblies).39 As long as council members displayed loyalty to the Hungarian state and to the program of Magyarization, it apparently mattered little to the few Magyar observers if they continued to speak German, as was still customary at the Temeswar town hall assemblies around 1890.40 This was not regarded as a symbolically marked language choice, but simply as a sign of their limited abilities in Hungarian. In contrast, minute-keeping in a minority language easily outraged Magyar authors, especially if the German original was translated into Romanian but not into Hungarian, as was the case in Brassó and Sebeș.41 Still, apart from public announcements and contact with the public, the minutes of council meetings constituted that domain of local administration where minority languages had the firmest basis. This was first because most council members were not town hall employees (and thus did not need to speak Hungarian), and second because they themselves probably invested these records with symbolic importance. The examples of Caransebeș and Lugoj show that minority languages continued to be used in the minutes even where town or communal employees routinely did their paperwork in Hungarian. The same applies

37  Ibid., 147/1898–1900, 3; ibid., 1/1897–1899; ibid., 4/1913–14, 37. 38  Ibid., 1/1897–9, 64. 39  Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten, 106–8; King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans, 61. 40  Róbert Tábori, “Temesvár,” Magyar Salon 12 (1889/90): 50; Ferenc Herczeg, Német nemzetiségi kérdés: négy ujságcikk [The question of German nationality: four articles] (Budapest: Singer and Wolfner, 1902), 16. 41  Hangay, Harcz a magyarságért, 108; Gábor G. Kemény, ed., Iratok a nemzetiségi kérdés történetéhez Magyarországon a dualizmus korában [Documents on the history of the nationalities problem in Hungary in the Dualist Era], vol. 3 (Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1964), 323; ANR Alba Iulia, Fond Primăria orașului Sebeș (inv. 33) 20/1897, 540–41, 559–60.

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for the invitations announcing the time and the agenda of council meetings, which were typically convened between ten and twenty times a year.42 In places where the minutes were kept in multiple versions, only one version, the authentic one, was produced simultaneously with the council meetings, which the notary or deputy notaries then translated into the other languages before the next session. The statute of Lugoj from 1887 shrewdly evaded the question of an authentic version by mandating that minute-taking should alternate between Romanian, German, and Hungarian.43 Once a year, when the leadership took inventory of the communal assets and a representative of the county checked their books, the town secretary minuted the council meetings in Hungarian, even where Hungarian was not a language of the minutes. In the town of Mediasch (Mediaș/Medgyes) in 1883, this linguistic accommodation apparently made necessary the employment of a separate clerk versed in Hungarian, whose work was later fastened onto the ledger of minutes.44 5

Bylaws, Statutes and Correspondence with Counties

Before 1876, local governments could sometimes enact bylaws exclusively in a local language. In all semblance, the town statute of Sebeș from 1877 was still approved by the Ministry of Interior in its original, German version.45 After the early period, however, the ministry expected that the bylaws and statutes sent up to them for approval would be in Hungarian. The town council of Lugoj voted for a one-off translation fee of fifty forints in 1886 to have the town statute translated into Romanian and German.46 It seems, however, that towns with official languages other than Hungarian usually found a cheaper solution to routinize such translations. Translation became an integral part of local legislative practice from an early stage, since draft texts under discussion needed to be presented in multiple versions so that all councilors could understand them.47 Towns dominated by Saxons published their collections of statutes

42  M  agyar Statisztikai Közlemények, new series, vol. 58, 9–11. 43  Krassó-Szörényi Lapok 28 April 1887. Cf. the trilingual minutes from 1887; ANR Timișoara, Fond Primăria orașului Lugoj 18/1888. 44   A NR Alba Iulia, Fond Primăria orașului Mediaș, Registre 5/1883, 75–8. 45   A NR Alba Iulia, Fond Primăria orașului Sebeș (inv. 33) 29/1877, 13–20. 46   A NR Timișoara, Fond Primăria orașului Lugoj 18/1888, 11–13. 47   A NR Caransebeș, Fond Primăria orașului Caransebeș 5/1898–1915, 5–13, 33–6; ibid., 2/1884– 93, 30–2 and 141–6; ANR Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 341I/1909; ANR Brașov, Fond Primăria orașului Brașov, Serviciul Silvic 71/1906, 2–3.

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and bylaws in German only.48 But the most peculiar thing about these statutes is that in spite of them being in German, these texts did not regulate or indeed even touch upon language use at town halls, and neither did they set linguistic requirements for businesses operating in the towns. One cannot get rid of the impression that Saxon town councils cautiously shunned any sign of a deliberate language policy, trying to avoid conflicts, but also tacitly “naturalizing” their use of German. After the administrative reform of 1876, official correspondence between towns and village secretaries on the one hand, and counties on the other, predominantly took place in Hungarian. Even elected Saxon county officials like Gottfried Lani, Friedrich Jekel, and Gustav Thalmann, subprefects of Beszterce-Naszód, Brassó, and Szeben counties, respectively, regularly wrote in Hungarian to Saxon-dominated local governments.49 But it was precisely in the Saxon counties that this principle was not put into practice in a con­ sistent way. Between 1881 and 1884, the Romanian county administrator wrote in Hungarian or in German to the town of Sebeș, but in Romanian to its Romanian mayor and the police chief.50 As the prefect of Beszterce-Naszód County, the rabid Magyarizer Dezső Bánffy received German delivery receipts (Zustellungsbogen) from Bistritz.51 The mayor of Hermannstadt responded in German to a Hungarian circular from the subprefect of Beszterce-Naszód County, while Constantin Burdia, the mayor of Caransebeș, exchanged a few letters in Romanian with the subprefect of his county.52 In conclusion, Saxon regions and Krassó-Szörény County were a partial exception in that regard, too.

48  S tatute der kgl. Freistadt Bistritz (Bistritz: Verlag des Stadtmagistrates, 1898); Statute der k. freien Stadt Mediasch (Mediasch: Reissenberger, 1896); Statute und statutarischen Charakter besitzende Beschlüsse der königlichen freien Stadt Segesvár (Segesvár (Schäßburg): Krafft, 1905). 49   A NR Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 341I/1909, 35; ibid., 375/1910, 358, 438; ANR Brașov, Fond Breasla cizmarilor din Brașov, bundle 25, 89–90; ANR Alba Iulia, Fond Primăria orașului Sebeș (inv. 33) 29/1877, 162, 193, 197, 269–70; ibid., 15/1878, 20; 28/1881, 460; ibid., 19/1889, 2–3, 110; ibid., 239/1889, 30, 67, 363. 50   A NR Alba Iulia, Fond Primăria orașului Sebeș (inv. 33) 28/1881, 17, 21, 24, 26, 31, 33–4, 36, 41, 458v, 460; ibid., 33/1884, 394. 51   A NR Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 376/1879–90, 55. 52   A NR Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 341II/1909, 25–6; ANR Caransebeș, Fond Primăria orașului Caransebeș 9/1898, 17/1898, 192/1898.

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State Competencies

Regarding language choice in written administration, administrative law in Cisleithania distinguished between the state and local functions that municipal officials carried out. Therefore a Czech municipal physician in Reichenberg (Liberec) was justified in drafting certificates of medical treatment and responses to inquiries on public health issues in Czech, despite the German-only local town hall, while Ruthenian Greek Catholic priests in Galicia had to accept inquiries in Polish. This was because doctors, in relation to medical and public health authorities, and parish priests, in their capacities of registrars, acted as state officials.53 In a like manner, but in agreement with the emphatically monolingual central policies, there was a distinct set of tasks that Hungarian local governments had to perform in Hungarian, since apart from their functions strictly derived from the principle of local autonomy, they also represented the lowest level of state administration. This language stipulation remained mostly implicit and was partly defined by the monolingual forms and documents that were produced and distributed by the Budapest government. In most cases, local governments corresponded in Hungarian with the various specialized state agencies. They regularly updated the lists of taxpayers and of taxable items; collected tax returns; drafted lists of conscripts; provided information on artisans applying for business licenses, on diseased animals, and so forth, in Hungarian; and issued Hungarian-language tax booklets, work records, and building permits. After the introduction of state civil registries, these were also usually kept by town officials in Hungarian. It was the increase of such duties that made the paperwork overwhelmingly Hungarian at the Caransebeș town hall by the 1900s. But this was not a necessary development, as shown by the example of Bistritz, where the internal administration related to these functions was carried out in German. Towns with settled councils acted as industrial and building authorities of the first instance. In Caransebeș, all but one petition for business licenses and most petitions for building permits, together with the documentation attached to them, were drafted in Hungarian in 1907.54 At around the same time in Bistritz and Sebeș, while the building permits were in Hungarian, the respective departments of the town hall handled the incoming petitions in German. In Sächsisch Regen

53  Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten, 108–9, 131–2. 54   A NR Caransebeș, Fond Primăria orașului Caransebeș 47/1907–8.

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(Szászrégen/Reghinul Săsesc), the town hall transacted business licenses in Hungarian and building permits in German and Hungarian.55 There were also regular exceptions from Hungarian as the official language of state competencies. According to Act XIV of 1876, town physicians, as local officials, fulfilled the duty of coroner in towns. They stood under the control of a separate line of public health agencies, and yet the printed forms of death certificates were trilingual throughout Beszterce-Naszód County in 1891, Romanian-only in Orăștie in 1904, and German-only in Sächsisch-Regen in 1900 and in 1912.56 Sometimes, more often in the first two decades of the era, local governments also sent letters to the state authorities or even received letters from them in their local languages. In 1873, Krassó County called upon Lugoj to write in Hungarian to the tax office, but the town assembly decided to continue with the use of its two languages, Romanian and German, in their official correspondence.57 In the early 1900s, the town of Bistritz sent bilingual, German–Hungarian typewritten certificates to the local finance directorate concerning the craftsmen who applied for business licenses.58 Section 22 of the Law of Nationalities could not make mention of the many organs that did not yet exist at that time, but it expressly gave local governments the right to use their language in contact with the central government. It was only in the very early years, however, that they could assert even this right, although in the case of the Military Frontier, the period of transition stretched into the 1880s. In 1882, the Ministry of Defense called on Prime Minister Tisza to instruct the town of Weißkirchen (Bela Crkva/Biserica Albă/Fehértemplom), formerly the headquarters of the Banat Serb Border Regiment, that they should write to the government in Hungarian. Tisza ordered an investigation to find out in what language the minutes of the town meetings were kept. After learning that the town council had voted to retain German as its official language in the previous year―“until the time when the larger expansion of Hungarian

55   A NR Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 370/1910 and 375/1910; ANR Alba Iulia, Fond Primăria orașului Sebeș (inv. 33) 39/1889, 533; ibid., 15/1897, 14; ibid., 20/1897, 52; ANR Târgu Mureș, Fond Primăria orașului Reghin (inv. 258) 111/1912, 334. 56   A NR Bistrița, Fond Judecătoria cercuală Rodna 1/1881 [recte 1891!], 119; ANR Deva, Fond Primăria orașului Orăștie 1/1904; ANR Târgu Mureș, Fond Primăria orașului Reghin (inv. 258) 72/1900 and 111/1912. 57  Iványi, Lugos, 127. 58   A NR Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 370/1910.

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makes it possible to introduce the state language in the town hall”59―Tisza resolved that this circumstance justified the town’s usage of German in its correspondence with the Ministry of Defense.60 7

Internal Administration and Finances

With state competencies constantly growing over time, two additional factors also influenced linguistic patterns in the handling of strictly municipal functions. First among these was the given official’s language repertoire. Neither Lugoj, Caransebeș, or Orăștie was ever stormed by job applicants from distant parts of the country, and although county administrators rarely mentioned language requirements in their job announcements, the deficient Romanian of a certain Thomas Waninger, who worked as the municipal comptroller of Caransebeș in the 1890s, could be the main reason why the statements of accounts of the local funds became German–Hungarian bilingual during his term.61 The second factor was the county in which the town lay. Since counties had supervisory powers over the finances of local governments, in practice they could also make them translate their yearly budgets and accounts into Hungarian. From the towns dominated by Saxons, I have only found budgets and accounts in German.62 The budget of Orăștie (Hunyad County) for 1904 and the budgets for 1894–95 and 1901 of Caransebeș (Krassó-Szörény County) and its statement of accounts for 1898 were trilingual, while the budgets of Lugoj (in the same county) for 1892 were bilingual, in Hungarian and Romanian.63 The plurilingualism of these documents could become useful when they were put on display in the town halls. 59   Leonhard Böhm and Alfred Kuhn, “Weißkirchen im ungarischen Staatsverband,” in Heimatbuch der Stadt Weißkirchen im Banat, ed. Alfred Kuhn, (Salzburg: Verein Weißkirchner Ortsgemeinschaft, 1980), 88. 60  Magyar Országos Levéltár (henceforth MOL) K150, 1890-II-2 (bundle 1857). 61   A NR Caransebeș, Fond Primăria orașului Caransebeș 91/1898–1900, 15, 24. On Lugoj, see Elemér Jakabffy, Krassó-Szörény vármegye története [History of Krassó-Szörény County] (Lugoj: 1940), 539. 62  Budget der Stadt Schässburg für das Jahr … (Schässburg: Horeth, 1900–); Voranschlag der Stadt Segesvár für das Jahr … (Schässburg: Horeth, 1908–13); ANR Brașov, Fond Primăria orașului Brașov, Serviciul Silvic 23/1900–1; ANR Sibiu, Inventory 436 (Magistratul orașului și scaunului Sibiu, Acte Prezidiale). 63   A NR Deva, Fond Primăria orașului Orăștie 1/1904; ANR Caransebeș, Inventory 64 (Primăria orașului Caransebeș); ibid., Fond Primăria orașului Caransebeș 91/1898–1900, 8; ANR Timișoara, Inventory 363 (Primăria orașului Lugoj).

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As Saxon towns had few non-Saxon officials, they conducted their internal written administration in German across the board. In Caransebeș, however, the situation can be best described as Romanian–Hungarian bilingual at the turn of the century, governed by pragmatic aspects and officials’ personal preferences, but in a way that all of them needed both languages (and preferably also German). Asset registers, financial accounts, and other numerical records had bi- or trilingual headings, but office correspondence, internal notes of town-hall employees, records in personnel matters, and so on were sometimes written in the one and sometimes in the other language. Trilingual headings on financial accounts may have worked as a preventive measure, since it was always a possibility that a central organ could ask for a Hungarian translation. One such instance took place in 1885, when the Minister of Justice instructed Brassó to present its ledgers in Hungarian, although without a legal basis―it referred to Section 5 of the Law of Nationalities, which was irrelevant to the point at issue since the town had no county rights.64 After 1886, police chiefs became the only town officials not elected by town assemblies, but appointed for life by county prefects.65 As a result, police departments tended toward the written use of Hungarian. Around 1910, the Hungarian stamp and the Hungarian-only forms of the police department in Bistritz stood in a curious contrast to the German-language administration of the town.66 Cornel Dragomir, the otherwise Romanian police chief of Caransebeș from 1890, carried out his internal correspondence in Hungarian and was addressed in that language by his fellow officials.67 At the same time, the police departments of these towns followed the local practice of issuing bi- or trilingual announcements, while in Sebeș, at least under the Romanian police chief Ioan Piso, the police department also continued to write its documents in German.68 8

Local Jurisdiction

After the 1867 Compromise, the state left the jurisdiction of cases with sums in dispute below thirty forints to the local governments (changed to fifty crowns 64   M OL K150, 27701/1885 (bundle 1857). 65  Act XXII of 1886. In the parliamentary debate of the law, the antisemitic Party MP Gyula Margittay identified the appointment of police chiefs as a preventive measure against national minority mobilization; Képviselőházi Napló 1884/7, vol. 10, 377. 66   A NR Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 375/1910, 107, 115, 162. 67   A NR Caransebeș, Inventory 1624 (Primăria orașului Caransebeș). 68   A NR Alba Iulia, Fond Primăria orașului Sebeș (inv. 33) 15/1897, 4, 74, 112; ibid., 20/1897, 52.

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in 1911).69 The provisions of the Law of Nationalities that granted the right of using one’s mother tongue in courts remained valid in connection with such local magistracies, chaired by the mayors or by sheriffs elected from among local councilors. Documents in fact attest to the written use of local public languages until the very end of the era, and the same documents were presented to district courts in cases of appeal. In the 1880s, local Romanian magistrates of Beszterce-Naszód County issued their sentences on Romanian-language forms printed at Friedrich Stolzenberg’s shop in Bistritz, while Romanian communes in Krassó-Szörény County could obtain similar print forms in Romanian from János/Johann (‘Ioanu’ on the print) Wenczely’s Lugoj-based enterprise.70 Town magistracies, it seems, could afford multiple versions of the same documents. Lugoj used separate German- and Hungarian-language fine notices in 1886, probably with respect to the most probable first language of the people fined, and Brassó had separate German and Hungarian print forms for sentences around the turn of the century.71 The jurisdiction of petty cases thus remained the linguistically most plural sphere of local governance in the area. 9

Communication with the Public

In Dualist Austria, the languages used in written communication between municipalities and citizens became the favorite battlefield of antagonist nationalist camps, and the carefully provoked conflicts often led to a tug of war of the kind that in Hungary arose at much higher levels, between state and church, or Croatian and Hungarian authorities. In the crownlands, in the pursuit of creating legal precedents, nationalist activists spared no time, energy, or cost to appeal all the way up to the highest courts after the local town halls, who struggled precisely to avoid such precedents, sent back petitions written in a locally unrecognized language, which were often used as test balloons in the first place. Local governments, for their part, also did not shy away from conflict with the crownlands if they saw a fair chance to extend the official use of their language. In constitutional terms, the Landesüblichkeit (best translated into English as ‘province-wide language currency’) of a language justified its use in the official 69  Acts LIV of 1868 and I of 1911. 70   A NR Bistrița, Fond Judecătoria cercuală Rodna 1/1881 [recte 1891!], 1, 4, 14–15, 18; ANR Timișoara, Fond Primăria orașului Lugoj 1/1886. 71   A NR Timișoara, Fond Primăria orașului Lugoj 1/1886, 1–4; ANR Brașov, Fond Breasla cizmarilor din Brașov, bundle 25, 99; ibid., bundle 24, 25.

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sphere, but the concept was notoriously ill-defined. Did the officially declared Landessprache of a given crownland hold the landesüblich status in all the localities of the crownland, even where the language was little spoken? And if not, what local threshold should be applied? The two Austrian supreme courts did not set clear standards, but heard the appealed cases individually, and in the majority of them ruled in favor of the respective minority languages being locally landesüblich.72 The Imperial Court put an end to a long debate over the Slovenian-language statute of the lengthily named Catholic-Political and Agricultural Association for the Slovenes in Carinthia by deciding that the mere 3.5 percent (or rather, 1.85 percent) of self-reported Slovene-speakers made Slovenian landesüblich in Klagenfurt (Celovec), while a few per mille of people reporting Czech daily language use in the districts of Eger (Cheb) and Kolin (Kolín) sufficed for the Higher Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgerichtshof) to establish the local Landesüblichkeit of Czech, but without affirming the much-mooted principle that it was landesüblich over the whole Bohemia.73 It will appear inconsistent with these decisions that in 1904, the Imperial Court unanimously (with the votes of its Czech judges) denied the same status to Czech in Vienna, making the argument that Lower Austria was home to one single nationality: “The Czecho-Slavic nationality [Volksstamm] does not live in Vienna.”74 These verdicts had immediate economic consequences: towns that lost such cases were better off contracting translators for the languages ruled landesüblich within their borders. But the question of who should bear the translation costs remained unsettled; some towns swallowed them, others charged them on the petitioners, but neither towns nor petitioners could have them paid by the state.75 The Moravian Compromise of 1905 finally regulated the question in some detail; all Moravian communes were bound to accept requests drafted in Czech or German. If more than twenty percent of the local population spoke the language of the petition as their Umgangssprache (local vernacular), the local government also had to attend to and answer the petition in the same language. Otherwise, they could send the petition to the Landtag to have it translated free of charge.76 In 1907, Galicia enacted a more intricate regulation

72  Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten, 70–4, 114, 116. 73  Ibid., 118, 121, 128; Oskar Lobmeyr-Hohenleiten, “Steiermark, Kärnten, Krain,” in Das Nationalitätenrecht des altes Österreich, ed. Karl Gottfried Hugelmann, (Vienna: Braumüller, 1934), 491–2; Wolf, Die vielsprachige Seele Kakaniens, 121–2. 74  Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten, 80–2. 75  Wolf, Die vielsprachige Seele Kakaniens, 126–7. 76  Ibid., 126; Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten, 122.

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with a similar scope, which in essence also obliged local governments to handle petitions in Polish, Ruthenian (Ukrainian), and German.77 It is fully possible (and even probable) that towns with Magyar majorities and leaderships, feeling secure in the trenches of the state language, imposed Hungarian as the sole medium of their external administration. But my sources suggest that in the minority-majority towns that I studied, residents could in general address municipal departments in any locally widespread language, and if the matter did not fall under state competency, they could also expect to be answered in the same idiom. Indeed, this right was guaranteed in the town statute of Lugoj in 1887.78 The local town hall had already issued a few documents in Hungarian before it had become a language of its council the previous year, and continued to release certificates and acquittances in Romanian and German after its internal administration shifted to Hungarian.79 Saxon towns may have tried to keep up a German-only façade via the blank forms―custom-made for the local governments―that served to formalize their contact with the public. At the end of the era, the municipal cash desks of Bistritz and Sächsisch Regen still appear to have used exclusively German payment receipts.80 Upon entering Bistritz, travelers filled out German registration forms, locals conscripted to the third-class militia (népfelkelés), an eminently state function, received German-only summonses, and the town hall only introduced a Hungarian–German bilingual version of its delivery receipts alongside the German one before 1913.81 Delivery receipts of local governments were Romanian–Hungarian bilingual in Caransebeș in the 1900s, German or trilingual in Sebeș, and trilingual in Orăștie at the turn of the century.82 While these lithographed and printed forms helped the handling of routine requests from the public, large communes and towns could afford typewriters by that time, and Caransebeș indeed acquired typewriters with Romanian characters, mainly for correspondence in Romanian and the drafting of their statutes.83

77  Ibid., 123. 78  Krassó-Szörényi Lapok 28 April 1887. 79   A NR Timișoara, Inventory 363 (Primăria orașului Lugoj). 80   A NR Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 375/1910; ANR Târgu Mureş, Primăria orașului Reghin (inv. 258) 117/1913, 146. 81   A NR Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 412/1910; ibid. 432/1910, 15; ANR Bistrița, Inventory 619 (Primăria orașului Bistrița). 82   A NR Caransebeș, Fond Primăria orașului Caransebeș 19/1909, 167; ANR Alba Iulia, Primăria orașului Sebeș (inv. 33) 29/1877, 65 and 155; 39/1889, 670 and 15/1897, 254 and 335; ANR Deva, Fond Primăria orașului Orăștie 2/1903; ANR Brașov, Fond Primăria Șinca Nouă 11/1897, 32. 83   A NR Caransebeș, Fond Primăria orașului Caransebeș 147/1898–1900, 18.

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Public Announcements

The responses to a circular from 1909 give a detailed picture about the different channels that towns in the area used to get important news and decisions out to their citizens.84 What probably reached most people, including the illiterate, was the so-called drumming; a town-hall employee, equipped with a drum, cried out the various rulings and advertisements on squares and at street crossings. Most town governments also put posters in central places of the town’s neighborhoods, and many had a blackboard for announcements in front of the town hall. In Mediasch and in the Altstadt (Óbrassó/Brașovechi) district of Brassó, the Saxon Nachbarschaften (partially self-governing neighborhoods) circulated local news from house to house in a box (in three languages in the latter place).85 Finally, decisions that concerned the public at large and job vacancies were usually also announced in the local press. On account of the genuine necessity to make them understood, local governments usually accommodated their public announcements to the linguistic competencies of their citizens, and this was the domain where they least often exhibited loyalty to Hungarian (Banat Swabian towns where the local Magyarizing associations waged campaigns to purge the linguistic landscape may have formed an exception). The same compliance regarding the language of public announcements also softened French- and German-language policies in contemporary Alsace-Lorraine. Until 1870, not only communes and town halls, but préfectures, too, placed bilingual posters in the German-speaking regions of the two provinces. Later, as attested to by the second linguistic survey carried out under German sovereignty, not even the fanatical chauvinists among German officials proposed to introduce monolingual German public notices in French-speaking parts of German Lorraine, and indeed Germanspeaking towns also added French translations to German texts, accommodating their citizens’ limited understanding of standard German.86 In the Flemish-speaking Belgian city of Brugge (Bruges), the only Dutch-language documents issued by the town hall in the second half of the nineteenth century were a few posters announcing the dates of subscription to free education and the election of a specific law council.87 84   A NR Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 341II/1909, 29–61. 85  Ibid., 50; János Brenndörfer, “Az óbrassói szt.-bertalani egyházközség szász lakossága” [The Saxon community of the St. Bartholomew parish in Kronstadt-Altstadt/Óbrassó/ Brașovechi], A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum Néprajzi Osztályának Értesítője 14 (1913): 110. 86  Lévy, Histoire linguistique d’Alsace et de Lorraine, vol. 2, 230, 338, 350. 87  Wim Vandenbussche, “Triglossia and Pragmatic Variety Choice in Nineteenth-Century Bruges: A Case Study in Historical Sociolinguistics,” Journal in Historical Pragmatics 5 (2004): 34.

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For several years after 1873, advertisements were still drummed out exclusively in Romanian in Déva, as they were in Lugoj, including in its German neighborhood, until at least 1886—perhaps because local Germans were supposed to understand Romanian.88 Drummings took place in Romanian and German in Caransebeș around 1890, in compliance with the local linguistic settings, although much of the internal administration of the town was already conducted in Hungarian.89 Among Saxon towns, certainly Brassó and Schäßburg (possibly others too) had full-time Romanian translators on their payroll, whose main job it was to translate all official orders and announcements into Romanian.90 In 1891, however, all but one of the posters by the Schäßburg town hall were in German.91 Brassó, Lugoj, and likely also Orăștie printed out their public notices in three languages.92 In Sebeș, announcements were made in German and Romanian.93 From Bistritz, I only found four posters in German from 1913; from Caransebeș, a Romanian–German bilingual one from 1890 and two in all three languages from 1898 and from 1907.94 It should not be left unmentioned, however, that these plurilingual or entirely non-Hungarian posters were placed side by side with those released by the counties, which often paid little or no respect to the languages of their citizens.95 88  Réthi, Déva, 129–30; 3y, “Harcz az ‘is’ ellen” [The fight against “too”], Krassó-Szörényi Lapok 29 July 1886. 89   A NR Caransebeș, Fond Primăria orașului Caransebeș 2/1884–93, 1894–95. 90  Stenner, Die Beamten der Stadt Brassó; Pompiliu E. Constantin, Însemnări din viață [Notes from life] (Sighișoara: Neagu, 1931), 42. 91   A NR Târgu Mureș, Fond Colecția de documente a muzeului din Sighișoara (inv. 322) 2009/1891–4. 92   A NR Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 341II/1909, 23; ANR Brașov, Fond Breasla cizmarilor din Brașov, bundle 22, 163 and bundle 25, 28; Eugen Pavlescu, Meșteșug și negoț la românii din sudul Transilvaniei (sec. XVII–XIX) [Crafts and commerce among the Romanians of Southern Transylvania, seventeenth to nineteenth centuries] (Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1970), 390; Iványi, Lugos, 127; ANR Deva, Fond Primăria orașului Orăștie 1/1904. 93   A NR Alba Iulia, Fond Primăria orașului Sebeș (inv. 33) 39/1889, 213–14, 354, 529–30, 664–5; ibid., 16/1890, 98–9; ibid., 15/1897, 63–5; Nicolae Iorga, Neamul romănesc în Ardeal și în Țara Ungurească [The Romanian people in Transylvania and Hungary], vol. 1 (Bucharest: Minerva, 1906), 208. 94   A NR Bistrița, Fond Primăria orașului Bistrița (inv. 619) 58/1913, 11–14; ANR Caransebeș, Fond Primăria orașului Caransebeș 2/1884–1893; 91/1898–1900, 8; Béla Gajda, “Az intézet alapítása” [The founding of the institution], in A karánsebesi m. kir. állami főgimnázium első évi értesítője az 1907–1908. tanévről [Yearbook for the first, 1907/8 school year of the Caransebeș/Karánsebes/Karansebesch Hungarian Royal High Gymnasium], (Karánsebes, 1908), 35. 95  Károly Jancsó, “A vármegye és a nemzetiségek” [The county and the nationalities], Nyugat 5 (1912): 782.

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11 Conclusion To draw a balance sheet, let me set my findings against the linguistic rights granted in the Law of Nationalities of 1868. Town councils could in general choose the language of their minutes (Section 20), and indeed it was one of the spheres where local tongues were most often used, while the actual language used in the meetings (Section 22) was, unlike in Austrian town halls, rarely problematized. But a qualification is needed: it is very doubtful whether in councils where Magyars constituted a majority the minorities could enforce the twenty percent threshold established by the law. The freedom to choose the language of internal administration was circumscribed by the assistance local governments provided to specialized state agencies. The related documents were the first to be prepared in Hungarian, and town officials and clerks were burdened with new tasks of this kind during the period. Once they began doing much of their office work in Hungarian, mental laziness in itself drove them towards monolingual practice. For example, the personnel of the Caransebeș town hall, in spite of its mainly Romanian composition, was slowly shifting to using Hungarian in its daily duties around the turn of the century. The thoroughly multilingual internal administration of Orăștie was becoming more of a colorful exception, as did Bistritz, where even some tasks falling under state competencies were carried out in German. And it has to be stressed that the local government officials who made use of Romanian or German were typically native Romanian- and German-speakers. Sections 22 and 25 of the 1868 Law of Nationalities granted towns the right to use their language in writing to state and county authorities, and to receive an answer from them in the same tongue. After the early phase of the era, only in very rare instances did a municipal official even try to assert this right vis-à-vis a state agency. For one thing, local governments seldom engaged in symbolic politics in Hungary. Also, official correspondence might not seem to be the appropriate terrain to sound out the limits of state officials’ respect for the law, since towns were understandably interested in getting their problems solved quickly and without complication. With regard to county authorities, the correspondence that took place between them and communes in German or Romanian involved Romanian or Saxon officials on both sides, with a handful of exceptions. However, even the Saxon leaders of Beszterce-Naszód, Brassó, and Szeben Counties usually wrote in Hungarian to the Saxon-dominated communes in their territories. In the towns that I studied, private individuals could file requests with local authorities and receive certificates in their native tongues (Section 21), but not necessarily in places where the respective language was not a language

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of the minutes, and likely not where its speakers formed a minority. In most cases, different forms of public announcements were made with attention to the languages spoken locally, although with a certain amount of contingency. Ostentatiously paying respect to Hungarian and Romanian and often treating the two by the same standard, Saxon town leaders often found means to bear out the primacy of German, in the same manner that state institutions and counties emphasized the primacy of Hungarian even when using plurilingual strategies. Virilism did not skew the ethnolinguistic proportions of the population to the same extent in local councils as in county assemblies. Together with the (selectively implemented) narrow franchise, it did secure the grip of Saxons over some towns where they only constituted a minority. However, regarding the rest of the towns to which Kálmán Tisza extended the parliamentary franchise, if he expected from this measure to put the Magyar and Magyarized middle class firmly in the saddle, it seems that his calculations were misguided. In no more than maybe one or two towns could local Magyars compensate for their numerical weakness with their economic weight and monopolize the town leadership. In Lugoj, the Magyarization of internal administration was out of sync with the linguistic makeup of the town council, but with the loss of the archival material, this exact process could be unraveled only through a comparative reading of several years of the local press. The system of local governance that was in place in Dualist Hungary was based on partly plutocratic, partly democratic representation and local autonomy circumscribed by the county organs’ supervisory power and their right to nominate village secretaries. The demand for a different, appointive system, staffed entirely by Magyars or Hungarian-speakers, resulted logically from an aggressive state nationalism and was in fact championed incessantly by Magyar politicians and journalists of various stripes. Over such a stateoperated system, the existing one had the clear advantage that, even if the former were at all feasible, it would have been predictably costlier, mainly because it would have disposed of much of the available local resources and because it would have needed additional control mechanisms to reduce the dysfunctions arising in large part from the widened language gap between the administrators and the administered. Or alternatively, the state could have established mandatory language training for its reliable agents, which, beyond the costs incurred, would have also revalorized the minority languages. For the state, the presence of local languages in local governments could seem a reasonable concession, as long as it was invisible to the wider Magyar public and town officials translated local documents for the central administration. And

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besides, non-Hungarian administration was likely more restricted in other parts of the country. Whereas in contemporary Cisleithania, local conflicts over official language use regularly served as clarion calls for wide-ranging waves of nationalist protests, similar incidents at Hungarian town halls did not become issues for grassroots mobilization. Romanian nationalists had their own reasons to relegate the question of urban administration to a subordinate role, given that Romanians lived in towns much below their share in the population at large. If in a series of towns, German and Romanian had a well-established use in the council minutes, in the external and sometimes in the internal administration, that was not because of the generosity of higher authorities, but on account of the strength of national minorities in the councils. Unlike in Austria, minority politicians could not expect any improvement of their standing from state intervention into local politics, only a change for the worse.

Chapter 9

The People of the “Five Hundred Villages”: Hungarians, Rusyns, Jews, and the Roma in the Transcarpathian Region in Austria–Hungary Csilla Fedinec and István Csernicskó 1 Introduction* With the establishment of Austria-Hungary in 1867, independent systems of administration developed in the two halves forming the union. The Austrian half was divided into historically defined provinces, of which the largest and most populated province, Galicia, achieved the greatest independence, functioning practically autonomously after 1867. By the early twentieth century its population exceeded 8 million people, with two hundred thousand of them living in its capital city, Lemberg (Lwów/L’viv). By comparison, historic Transcarpathia,1 within the Kingdom of Hungary, was a significantly smaller region, with significantly fewer inhabitants. *  The study was written for the “Minority Hungarian Communities in the Twentieth Century” research program, with the financial support of the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (No. 109173). 1  The region known as Transcarpathia took shape as a political entity only in the twentieth century, under names that varied over time and between languages. The geographical extent of the territory also changed several times. Prior to First World War it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. From December 25, 1918, to September 10, 1919, it was known as the “Ruska-Krajna” Autonomous Area, but the continuing warfare prevented the establishment of exact boundaries for this territory. After the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (March 21 to August 6, 1919), this area took the name of “Podkarpatská Rus” [Subcarpathian Ruthenia] and became part of Czechoslovakia under of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-enLaye. During the brief period of a federated Czecho-Slovakia (October 1938–March 1939), the region was designated on November 22, 1938, as an autonomous territory with the official name of “Karpatska Ukraina” [Carpathian Ukraine]. This territory then became independent for a few hours on March 15, 1939. Occupied by Hungary, and thereafter remaining under Hungarian control, the region became a Hungarian administrative entity as the “Kárpátaljai Kormányzóság” [Subcarpathian Governorship]. The territory then came under Soviet control in October 1944 as “Zakarpatska Ukraina” [Transcarpathian Ukraine], and became formally incorporated into the Soviet Union on January 22, 1946. On August 24, 1991, the region became the “Zakarpattia Oblast” [Transcarpathian county] of independent Ukraine and in general sense “Transcarpathia” or “Subcarpathia”. Nándor Bárdi, Csilla Fedinec, and László

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004407978_010

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The northeastern corner of the Kingdom of Hungary was one of the unique regions of Europe; it was a Zwischenraum, “in-between space,” or “borderland.” Until 1918, it was never a single administrative unit, but was divided between several Hungarian counties,2 although from a Rusyn and a Jewish historical perspective, the border region between Prešov (Eperjes) and Maramureș (Máramaros/Maramarosh) was a homogenous region (in the direct neighborhood of East Slavic territories belonging to the Austrian Empire of the Monarchy). The events that took place from the end of 1918 onwards “decomposed” this historic-cultural unit and split its territory between a number of countries. This was the time of the emergence of a new minority in the area: ethnic Hungarians. The political borders of the region have never coincided with its ethnic, ethnographic, linguistic, or cultural borders. Furthermore, it remained on the periphery, and several centers of power have exerted their influence on it to this very day. Nationalism, the trend of the eighteenth century, placed the concept of nation before social order, class, and religion. Nationalism clearly is also closely connected to the question of languages and their development. Until the end of twentieth century, Transcarpathia was a typically multilingual peripheral region. In the era of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the local population consisted of Hungarians, following western Christianity and the corresponding cultural traditions; Rusyns, residing in the area since the Middle Ages and attracted to both western and eastern Christianity and cultural traditions; and Jews, living in the region from the sixteenth century onwards, but in larger numbers after arriving in several waves of migration from Galicia— northernmost province of the Austrian Empire—up to the mid-nineteenth century. Hungarians had their own kin state and were the nation-building people; they turned towards their centers (Vienna as the Monarchy’s primary capital and Budapest as the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary) and tried to assimilate others. The Rusyn community tried to find its place and was under the influence of several power centers simultaneously: the intellectual and professional classes tended to be attracted to Hungarian assimilation attempts, but there was also the hesitation between Russian (Pan-Slavic) and Ukrainian identities and languages.3 The question was whether they would accept the Pan-Slavic principle and thus choose the Russian standard or the Ukrainian Szarka, eds., Minority Hungarian Communities in the Twentieth Century. Atlantic Studies on Society in Change, No. 138 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011) 8–9. 2  The “county” (vármegye) was the official name of top-level historic administrative units in the Kingdom of Hungary from the tenth century until 1949. 3  Among the ethnonyms used for Transcarpathian Rusyns, “Russian” was also to be found in the Hungarian language up to the end of the Second World War. However, in the period of

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identity and language. Additionally, the reinforcement of a local identity and language was also present. The main question regarding Rusyns has remained the same ever since then: Is it a natural process of language development or political influence that determines the future of the “Rusyn language?” Jews in power centers tended to assimilate; however, in the peripheries of power, like Transcarpathia, they did not. The traditional polyglossia of local Jews was sustained even after the turn of the twentieth century, when it had almost entirely disappeared among Jews living in other regions of Hungary. The Hungarian Christian society of the era of the Dual Monarchy responded accordingly, calling those considered to be assimilated Jews “their Israelite compatriots,” while those who resisted assimilation were pejoratively called “Galicianers.” The linguistic diversity of Transcarpathia still manifests itself differently in a rural environment than in small towns. The ethnolinguistic relations of Transcarpathia in the dualist period have been treated as a peripheral issue in the relevant literature. The two principal works—an early work of Paul Robert Magocsi4 and a volume on the history of Transcarpathian Jews5—are available only in Hungarian. A general feature of the literature on Transcarpathia is a focus on only one single ethnic unit and a lack of knowledge of those languages necessary for the full exploration of the research question. The methodological novelty of the present chapter is its multidisciplinary approach, making it possible—in the case of the Rusyn language, among other topics—to deal separately with the political discussion of its existence, and at the same time pose the questions of what the “Rusyn language” meant and how it changed in different historical periods from a philological point of view. The difference between spoken language and the language of the press can be approached through the study of contemporary media (which, on a certain level, replicates everyday speech) and the language of schoolbooks. People living in Transcarpathia always had to undergo integration into new systems when each of the subsequent regimes incorporated or liquidated the subsystems formed in the previous period without much consideration. Language has always had a key role in the self-identification process of the nation-state and individuals, as well as in the peculiar formations of regional border revisions (1938–1944), the “politically correct,” i.e., official, name of Transcarpathian Rusyns was “Hungarian Russians.” 4  Paul Robert Magocsi, The Shaping of a National Identity: Subcarpathian Rus’ 1848–1948 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978). 5  Viktória Bányai, Csilla Fedinec, and Szonja Ráhel Komoróczy, eds., Zsidók Kárpátalján: történelem és örökség a dualizmus korától napjainkig [Jews in Carpatho-Russ: History and heritage from the mid-nineteenth century to the present] (Budapest: Aposztróf, 2013).

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and ethnic identity. Each regime paid special attention to language policy and tried to arrange the relations between languages used in Transcarpathia in order to meet their own social, economic, cultural, and political interests, so that they could have influence over the national and linguistic identity and civic loyalty of the inhabitants. The long-term survival of linguistic, national, or ethnocultural communities widely depends on the decisions of the central or regional governments that determine which language is to be used in education and public service, as well as the language context and the system of measures forming the linguistic and cultural integration of national, ethnic, or language minorities, and autochthonous or immigrant communities. In this chapter, we will explore from a historical and sociolinguistic perspective which nation-building and linguistic ideologies had an impact on the linguistic and ethnic development of the northeastern part of the Kingdom of Hungary. Our research focuses on the small communities torn apart by several power centers. 2

Territory and Population

According to the censuses of Austria-Hungary, native speakers of Hungarian constituted less than half of the population of the Kingdom of Hungary. Only 2.5 percent of the population indicated Rusyn as their mother tongue (regarding themselves as руський/rus′kyj—Carpathian Rusyns or Ruthenians), outnumbered by the Romanian, German, Slovak, Croatian, and Serbian communities in the country (Table 1). Rusyns lived as a compact community in the counties along the northeastern border of Hungary, with Galicia on the other side, primarily in Zemplén (Zemplyn), Ung, Bereg, Ugocsa (Ugocha), and Máramaros (Maramarosh counties).6 A relatively small group of Rusyns from these counties was forcibly settled in the regions of Banat and Bácska (Bačka in today’s Vojvodina, Serbia) in the mid-eighteenth century. Throughout this period, the northeastern tip of the Kingdom of Hungary never received its own separate, unified administrative system. Then the events starting in late 1918 divided this historical and cultural space, carving up and giving its territory to several countries, and created a new minority group in the region, that of Hungarians. The region became part of the spheres of influence 6  Paul Robert Magocsi, “A Borderland of Borders: The Search for a Literary Language in Carpathian Rus’,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders, ed. Tomasz Kamusella, Motoki Nomachi, and Catherine Gibson (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 101–23.

164 Table 1

Fedinec and Csernicskó The mother tongue composition of the population of the Kingdom of Hungary, according to the censuses of Austria-Hungary (not including Croatia-Slavonia)

Mother tongue

1880

1890

1900

1910

population (%)

population (%)

population (%)

population (%)

Hungarian German Slovak Romanian Ruthenian Croatian and Serbian Other Total

 6,165,455 (44.8)  1,799,232 (13.1)  1,790,485 (13.0)  2,323,794 (16.9) 342,354 (2.5) 613,394 (4.5)

 7,356,874 (48.6)  1,988,589 (13.1)  1,896,641 (12.5)  2,589,066 (17.1) 379,782 (2.5) 678,747 (4.5)

 8,651,520 (51.4)  1,999,060 (11.9)  2,002,165 (11.9)  2,798,559 (16.6) 424,774 (2.5) 629,169 (3.7)

 9,944,627 (54.4)  1,903,357 (10.4)  1,946,357 (10.7)  2,948,186 (16.1) 464,270 (2.5) 656,324 (3.6)

714,889 (5.2) 13,749,603 (100)

243,795 (1.6) 15,133,494 (100)

333,008 (2.0) 16,838,255 (100)

401,412 (2.3) 18,264,533 (100)

Source: Digital Census Database, Central Statistical Office of Hungary, https://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/collection/kozponti_statisztikai _hivatal_nepszamlalasi_digitalis_adattar/ Accessed: 1 September 2016

of a number of centers at the same time. During the Paris peace talks following the First World War, the newly formed Czechoslovakia’s transportation interests and the presence of rail lines (rather than ethnic boundaries) were taken into account in drawing the borders of Transcarpathia. Today, Rusyn ethnic territory is divided across the eastern half of Slovakia, the Transcarpathian region in Ukraine, and the region of Maramureş in Romania. The region (called Carpatho-Russ in Jewish Studies literature) was unified and unique from the perspective of Jewish history and culture as well. The borders of historical Subcarpathia or Transcarpathia (the term preferred depends on one’s political views), a political unit created according to the interests of the leading powers, still do not correspond to ethnic, ethnographic, historical, or cultural boundaries; thus, its character as an in-between space and periphery has persisted. The Rusyn autonomous region Rus’ka Kraïna (Rus’ Land), formed by independent Hungary at the very end of 1918, did not have fixed borders due to the complex internal and foreign policy situation of the time, but even so it functioned remarkably well in terms of administration for a few months. The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, signed on 10 September 1919, drew a border around 109 towns and villages in Ung County, 219 in Bereg County, 55 in Ugocsa County, 103 in Máramaros County, 3 in Szabolcs County, and one in Szatmár

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County. According to the Hungarian census of 1910, the total population of this region was slightly over six hundred thousand people, with its largest town, Ungvár (Uzhhorod), having slightly less than seventeen thousand.7 This territory of thirteen thousand square kilometers (about 5,020 square miles), with fewer than 500 towns and villages in the early twentieth century, is what is understood in this chapter as Transcarpathia. Understanding fully well the distorting nature of projecting borders backwards in time, we nevertheless consider this definition acceptable for the sake of comparison with later situations. In the period of dualism, only the three urban districts8—Beregszász (Berehove), Munkács (Mukacheve), and Ungvár—experienced some in-migration. In the 1870s the population of the region was adversely affected by epidemics. Mass emigration to America started around the turn of the century: about 1.2 million people left Hungary, most of them from northeastern Hungary. Proportionally, ethnic Hungarians constituted a minority among those emigrating.9 This was followed by population growth due to the building of the railway. The construction of the Hungarian Northeastern Railway began in the 1860s. Neighboring Galicia became reachable by railway from 1884.10 During the Austro-Hungarian period, out of the 490 population centers of the Transcarpathian region,11 three were urban districts and the rest were minor or major villages.12 Ungvár, Munkács, and Beregszász were “small 7  István D. Molnár, “A hatalomváltások hatása Kárpátalja népességszámának alakulására 1869-től napjainkig” [The effect of changes of power on the number of inhabitants in Subcarpathia, from 1869 to the present] (PhD diss., University of Debrecen, 2013), 22, https://dea.lib.unideb.hu/dea/handle/2437/169062 (accessed 1 September 2016). 8  The “three urban districts [rendezett tanácsú város]” in the public administration between 1870 and 1929 constituted one of the legal categories of cities in Hungary. Such cities did not belong to the lower administrative unit (district), but were directly subordinate to the authority of the county. 9  Róbert Bagdi, “Bereg és Ung vármegye migrációtörténeti összehasonlítása 1899–1913 között” [A comparison of migration history in Bereg and Ung counties between 1899 and 1913], in Asszimiláció és migráció Északkelet-Magyarországon és a Partiumban 1715–1992 [Assimilation and migration in northeastern Hungary and in the Partium], ed. Gábor Demeter and Róbert Bagdi (Debrecen: [DE], 2009), 61–70. 10  Tibor Bajor and B.P. Prihodko, “Kárpátalja vasúti és közúti közlekedésének fejlődése” [The development of railways and roads in Transcarpathia], Tudományos Közlemények 30 (2014): 69–70. 11  Specifically in the year 1914. Molnár, A hatalomváltások hatása, 22. 12  In Hungary, the Act XVIII of 1871 created the legal distinction between kisközség (small municipality) and nagyközség (large municipality). A small municipality denoted those villages that could not meet the obligations of the laws alone, and so they performed their duties in association with other municipalities or a larger municipality. This did not mean the termination of the municipal council; they still had elected representatives

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county seats,”13 with populations of less than ten thousand each, so it is no exaggeration to apply the topos “five hundred villages” to the region, whose population totaled 401,280 people in 1869, and 602,774 in 1910. The center of the village was usually the church and, starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, the village hall and the school. Every village typically had a tavern and a shop as well. In most villages social differences were strictly preserved. The priest, the notary public, and the teacher, together with the doctor and the pharmacist in villages that had them, constituted the local “intellectuals.” Ethnic divisions were also substantial, with various ethnic communities usually living in different parts of the village. The notary and the teacher represented “the state,” and the priest was the person closest to the people.14 About 80 percent of the region is mountainous, and 20 percent, plains. The three towns of the region are on a plain or at the edge of it; all three of them used to be traditionally dominated by ethnic Hungarian populations. In 1880 Ungvár had a Hungarian majority of 80.1 percent; Munkács, 73.1 percent, and Beregszász, 96.1 percent. The latter is the only one that still has a local Hungarian majority.15 The county seat served as the public domain of local political and social life. Important political positions were usually filled by members of local Hungarian noble families, typically through family connections, and almost always within the county where the family had its lands. It was rare for families to own land in more than one county. In a much more limited fashion, it was also occasionally possible to gain a political position through connections established through membership in local social organizations. A great part and officials. In a large municipality a town clerk was employed independently, but they belonged to a district. The name is not related to the population or other characteristics of the size of a settlement, although large municipalities were usually more populous, richer, and more developed than a village. 13  Zoltán Hajdú, “Egymás-mellettiség és megyeszékhely-verseny a dualizmus időszakában (Sátoraljaújhely és a szomszédos megyeszékhelyek közötti átrendeződések)” [Coexistence and competition between county seats in the period of dualism: A reorganization between Sátoraljaújhely and neighboring county seats], in Tiszteletkötet Dr. Gál András geográfus 60. születésnapjára [Festschrift for geographer Dr. András Gál’s 60th birthday], ed. Sándor Kókai and László Boros (Nyíregyháza; Szerencs: Nyíregyházi Főiskola Turizmus és Földrajztudományi Intézete—Bocskai István Katolikus Gimnázium, 2015), 261–5. 14   András Gergely, “Települések, lakások és lakóik a századforduló Magyarországán” [Population centers, houses, and their inhabitants in Hungary at the turn of the century], Történelmi Szemle 14, nos. 3–4 (1971): 410–12. 15  Molnár, A hatalomváltások hatása, 35.

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of the political, economic, and cultural elite was centered around clubs and Masonic lodges. The political weight of the region (or rather the lack thereof) is well demonstrated by the fact that Transcarpathian politicians recognized outside of the region took up positions here only very rarely, only if they did not have a chance elsewhere, and typically left as soon as they could. As far as the position of lord-lieutenant (the official appointed to head a county) was concerned, the tendency observed across the kingdom was that in regions populated by non-Magyar minorities, usually minor politicians with no local ties were appointed.16 According to the data of the 1910 census, virtually the entire population of this region was classified as immobile. In Hungary as a whole, 83.6 percent of the population allegedly lived where they had been born. Every county in Transcarpathia exceeded that proportion, and 95 percent of the population of Máramaros County never left the county in which they had been born.17 On the other hand, this period was also characterized by vibrant migration activity. While eastern and mountainous areas and cities were destinations for a significant number of people, villages in western and south-western areas were characterized by migratory loss. The influx of persons from neighbouring eastern territories dried up between the crush of the war of Hungarian independence in 1849 and the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The same was true in the case of post-1867 migration flows to Galicia that had been intensive though already decreasing between 1850 and 1867.18 More than 47,000 persons received an emigration passport from the four counties of Transcarpathia between 1900 and 1905. Moreover, 10,700 persons emigrated without passport. The majority of the emigrants were of Rusyn ethnicity, and they mainly settled down in the United States and Canada.19

16  András Cieger, “Interests and Strategies: An Investigation of the Political Elite of the SubCarpathian Region in the Age of Dualism (1867–1918),” in Elites and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe (1848–1918), ed. Judit Pál and Vlad Popovici (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2014), 191–210. 17  Ibid., 104. 18  Miklós Konrád, “Demográfiai változások” [Demographic changes], in Zsidók Kárpátalján, 15–26. Miklós Konrád, “A galíciai zsidó bevándorlás mítosza” [The myth of Jewish immigration to Galicia], Századok 152, no. 1 (2018): 31–60. 19   István D. Molnár, Perifériáról perifériára—Kárpátalja népessége 1869-től napjainkig [From periphery to periphery—the population of Transcarpathia from 1869 to our days] (Budapest: Kalligram, 2018), 73–88.

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3 Hungarians As a result of a lengthy historical process of language politics,20 the Hungarian language became the official language of legislation, public administration, judiciary, and education in Hungary in 1844, as codified in Act II of that year.21 In the parts of the Habsburg Monarchy that formed Hungary, Hungarians did not constitute an absolute majority of the population. However, in the political thinking it became important to ensure the numerical majority of Hungarians. According to the Hungarian Nationalities Law of 1868,22 “due to the nation’s political unity, the state language of Hungary is Hungarian”;23 however, according to Article 1, laws had to be published in the languages of the nationalities24 as well. Article 21 stated that “community25 officials shall use the language of the local population when communicating with them.” According to Article 23, “every citizen of the country may submit their petition to their community, church authority, and municipality, the officials thereof as well as to the government in their mother tongue.”26 The nationalities of Hungary did not greet with joy the 1868 law on nationalities or the notion of Hungarian political nation spelled out in it, since by this time the minorities had started conceiving of nations of their own. They 20   See Gyula Szekfű, Iratok a magyar államnyelv kérdésének történetéhez 1790–1848 [Documents in the history of the question of state language between 1790 and 1848] (Budapest: Magyar Történelmi Társulat, 1926); Noémi Nagy, “Linguistic Legislation in Hungary during the Era of Dualism,” in Central Europe (Re-)visited. A Multi-Perspective Approach to a Region, ed. Marija Wakounig and Ferdinand Kühnel (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2015), 229–45, see 230–4. 21  Orsolya Nádor, Nyelvpolitika. A magyar nyelv politikai státusváltozásai és oktatása a kezdetektől napjainkig [Language policy: The political changes of status and teaching of the Hungarian language] (Budapest: BIP, 2002), 67. 22  See Attila Gidó, István Horváth, and Judit Pál, eds., 140 de ani de legislaţie minoritară în Europa Centrală şi de Est (Cluj-Napoca: ISPMN Publishing & Kriterion, 2010). 23   “A nemzet politikai egységénél fogva Magyarország államnyelve a magyar levén.” Legislation Database. https://net.jogtar.hu/ Accessed on 1 September 2016. 24  The term for minorities used at the time. 25  I.e., local municipalities, localities, settlements, and villages that did not have the status of a city. In the traditional Hungarian meaning of the word, “municipality” (törvényhatóság) denoted the governing body of an administrative division having corporate status and was used only for counties and cities. Therefore, in this paper the term “community” (község) will be used when referring to the local level of administration. Note that in this sense community means something else than a group of people living in the same place or having particular characteristics in common. See Noémi Nagy, “Linguistic Legislation,” 235. 26  “Az ország minden polgára saját községéhez, egyházi hatóságához és törvényhatóságához, annak közegeihez s az államkormányhoz intézett beadványait anyanyelvén nyújthatja be.” Legislation Database. https://net.jogtar.hu/ Accessed on 1 September 2016.

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especially deplored the fact that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the Hungarian political elite attempted to gradually limit the application of the principles spelled out in the law.27 Educational policy served the same goals,28 and part of the political arsenal of assimilationist Hungarian policies was also the encouraging of the Magyarizing of personal and place names. The results of the language policy are well reflected in the census data. Between 1880 and 1910, the number of mother tongue speakers of Hungarian in Hungary grew from 6.1 million to 9.9 million, their share of the total population from 44.8 to 54.5 percent. The natural increase in the proportion of mother tongue speakers of Hungarian was intensified by the linguistic assimilation of minorities, whose proportions decreased also due to emigration. The proportion of Hungarian mother tongue speakers in northeastern Hungary (Ung, Bereg, Ugocsa, and Máramaros counties) increased continuously, while in each of the four counties the proportion of mother tongue speakers of other languages decreased between 1890 and 1910 (see Figure 1). However, mother tongue speakers of Hungarian did not constitute the absolute majority of the population in any of these four counties. As a result of the obligatory teaching of Hungarian, the proportion of speakers of Hungarian increased among the minorities. In the entire region in question, the proportion of speakers of Hungarian increased in each minority group between 1880 and 1910. Just like in the country generally, in the four counties of the region the vast majority of the minority communities were monolingual speakers of their mother tongue (Figure 2). The essence of the Hungarian nationalities policy of the period was summarized by Mihály Réz, advisor to Prime Minister István Tisza, as follows: “Let’s not talk about liberty and equality; it is the rule of the Hungarian race that needs to be created. The nation state and society of the nation have to abide by this goal.”29 Even though the 1868 Nationalities Law provided a wide range of rights for the use of minority languages, these were ineffective since many of the Hungarian politicians who shaped Hungarian public political opinion 27  János Gyurgyák, Ezzé lett magyar hazátok. A magyar nemzeteszme és nacionalizmus története [This is what has become of your Hungarian motherland: The history of the Hungarian concept of nation and Hungarian nationalism] (Budapest: Osiris, 2007), 22–4, 72–82. 28  See Joachim von Puttkamer, Schulalltag und nationale Integration in Ungarn. Slowaken, Rumänen und Siebenbürger Sachsen in der Auseinandersetzung mit der ungarischen Staatsidee 1867–1914 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003), 15–69. 29  “Szabadságról és egyenlőségről ne beszéljünk; a magyar faj uralma az, amit meg kell teremteni. A nemzeti államnak, a nemzeti társadalomnak e célhoz kell idomulnia.” Cited in Ignác Romsics, “Nemzet és állam a modern történelemben” [Nation and state in modern history], Rubicon 12, nos. 8–9 (2001): 112–13.

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Figure 1

The change in the proportion of mother tongue speakers of Hungarian between 1880 and 1910 in Ung, Bereg, Ugocsa, and Máramaros counties, based on census data (in percentages) Source: Digital Census Database of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, https://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/ collection/kozponti_statisztikai_hivatal_nepszamlalasi_ digitalis_adattar/ Accessed: 1 September 2016

Figure 2

A change in the proportion of speakers of Hungarian among mother tongue speakers of other languages between 1880 and 1910, based on census data (in percentages) Source: Digital Census Database, Hungarian Central Statistical Office, https://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/collection/kozponti_ statisztikai_hivatal_nepszamlalasi_digitalis_adattar/ Accessed: 1 September 2016

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Figure 3

171

The proportion of monolingual speakers of Hungarian as a mother tongue between 1880 and 1910, based on census data (in percentages) Source: Digital Census Database, Hungarian Central Statistical Office, https://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/collection/kozponti_ statisztikai_hivatal_nepszamlalasi_digitalis_adattar/ Accessed: 1 September 2016

thought that this law gave too many rights to the minorities. For instance, Prime Minister Dezső Bánffy (1895–1899) was of the opinion that the direction and goal of Hungarian justice policy in the wake of the 1868 minority law was in fact “to oppose the actions of that law”—making “the use of the national language in public life obligatory in a unified manner. It has been taken care of, above all, that the official Hungarian language of the state should not just be available to everyone for learning, but everybody should be obliged to learn it … If that is everybody’s duty, by law, in the country, everybody will know Hungarian, and it will not be necessary, even as a recourse, to talk about allowances in language use provided for minorities by the law in question.”30 The Nationalities Law of 1868 contained broad language rights. This statement is true even if we compare it to the text of the 1867 Austrian Constitution. However, the difference between the Hungarian law and the contemporary English, French, and Spanish laws is also significant. These countries did not 30  “… lehetővé tenni, hogy a nemzeti nyelv használata a közéletben, szemben azon törvény intézkedéseivel, egységesen kötelezővé tétessék. Gondoskodás történt mindenekfelett arról, hogy az állam hivatalos magyar nyelvét ne csak mindenki megtanulhassa, de kötelezően meg is tanulja … Ha az országban, mint az a törvény értelmében mindenkinek kötelessége, mindenki fog tudni magyarul, nem lesz szükséges, méltányossági tekintetből sem, a szóban forgó törvény nyelvhasználatra vonatkozó, a nemzetiségeknek biztosított kedvezményekről beszélni.” Dezső Bánffy, Magyar nemzetiségi politika [Hungary’s nationalities policy] (Budapest: Légrády Testvérek, 1903), 33.

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allow and in some cases strictly forbade the use of languages other than the state language.31 In Hungary, however, the representatives of the national minorities were not satisfied with the law because they wanted similar national rights to the Hungarians. At the same time, historians pointed out that the provisions of the law were not implemented by the Hungarian state.32 However, there is little empirical evidence available with which to confirm or refute this statement for Transcarpathia.33 After the treaties concluding the First World War came into effect, the political and linguistic situation of the ethnic Hungarians changed drastically. Before 1918 all ethnic Hungarians of the Carpathian Basin could use their mother tongue in all situations. Many of those living in regions of linguistically mixed populations knew the language of the minority of their town or village, and used it in communication with minority members, but this bilingualism was different than the one that was to come. In the period of dualism only a small proportion of Hungarians spoke the language of a minority community, whereas the proportion of members of minorities speaking Hungarian was greater.34 For the Hungarians of Transcarpathia, the secession of the region triggered a process of ongoing linguistic isolation: unlike in the other regions that were separated from Hungary, here the proportion of those speaking the onetime state language was very low. Nevertheless, in today’s Ukrainian Transcarpathia the proportion of monolingual Hungarians is still about the same as in the early twentieth century, not lower.35

31  Noémi Nagy, A hatalom nyelve—a nyelv hatalma: Nyelvi jog és nyelvpolitika Európa történetében [The language of power—the power of the language: Language law and language policy in European history] (Pécs: Pécsi Tudományegyetem Állam- és Jogtudományi Karának Doktori Iskolája, 2015), 163–4. 32  R.J.W. Evans, “Language and State Building: The Case of the Habsburg Monarchy,” Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 1–24. Also see Ágoston Berecz's chapter in this volume. 33  Jan Fellerer “Multilingual States and Empires in the History of Europe: The Habsburg Monarchy,” in The Languages and Linguistics of Europe: A Comprehensive Guide, ed. Bernd Kortmann and Johan van der Auwera (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011), 713–28. 34   Sándor N. Szilágyi, “A magyar nyelv a Magyarországgal szomszédos országokban” [Hungarian in the countries neighboring Hungary], in Értékek, dimenziók a magyarságkutatásban [Values and dimensions in Hungarian studies], ed. Csilla Fedinec (Budapest: MTA Magyar Tudományosság Külföldön Elnöki Bizottság, 2008), 110. 35  István Csernicskó, Államok, nyelvek, államnyelvek. Nyelvpolitika a mai Kárpátalja területén (1867–2010) [States, languages, and state languages: Language policy in today’s Transcarpathia (1867–2010)] (Budapest: Gondolat, 2013), 28–49.

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4 Rusyns The settling of Rusyns from Galicia in Hungary had been continuous since the Middle Ages, partly as a result of spontaneous migration, and partly as a result of Hungarian landowners resettling Rusyn peasants to make up for a declining work force, especially during the period of Ottoman rule in Hungary (1541–1699). Rusyns were resettled in different parts of the country, with a great number of local communities forming in various regions and a relatively large Rusyn region in the mountainous part of northeastern Hungary. In the northernmost point of Hungary, Gömör (Gemer) and Torna (Turna) counties, the population that had once been Rusyn shifted to Slovak in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.36 The assimilation took place among these Rusyns. By the eighteenth century the linguistic border moved eastward, to Zemplén (Zemplyn) county (in today’s Slovakia).37 Rusyns did not develop roots in the Great Hungarian Plain (in today’s Hungary) even though Rusyn peasants were employed in agriculture there.38 The most common characteristic of their denomination, Greek Catholi­ cism,39 was the use of Old Church Slavonic as a liturgical language, with the priests speaking the local Slavic vernacular in their everyday lives in the territories close to the mountains, where they themselves originated from. Closer to the Great Hungarian Plain, this proficiency disappeared. For example, the parish priest of Hajdúdorog, Demeter Kerekes, is described as someone who “did not know Russian [i.e., Rusyn] well, as is usual with Greek Catholic priests in the Plain, what is more, he was proud to be a Hungarian—while at the same 36  Attila Paládi-Kovács, “Kárpát-ukrán telepek Észak-Magyarországon” [CarpathoUkrainian communities in northern Hungary], in Interetnikus kapcsolatok ÉszakkeletMagyarországon [Interethnic relations in northeastern Hungary], ed. Ernő Kunt, József Szabadfalvi, and Gyula Viga (Miskolc: Herman Múzeum, 1984), 129. 37  Edit Tamás, “A szlovák—magyar—ruszin nyelvhatár a történelmi Zemplén és Ung megyében” [The Slovak—Hungarian—Rusyn language border in the historical Zemplén and Ung counties], in Az interetnikus kapcsolatok kutatásának újabb eredményei [New findings in the research of interethnic relations], ed. Judit Katona and Gyula Viga (Miskolc: HOM, 1996), 271–72. 38  István Udvari, Ruszinok a XVIII. században. Történelemi és művelődéstörténeti tanulmányok [Rusyns in the eighteenth century: Studies in history and cultural history] (Nyíregyháza: Bessenyei, 1992), 108–11; István Pirigyi, A magyarországi görög katolikusok története. I. [The history of Greek Catholics in Hungary, part 1] (Nyíregyháza: Görög Katolikus Hittudományi Főiskola, 1990), 154. 39  In 1646 the Ungvar Union established the Greek Catholic Church in Transcarpathian region.

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time being greatly attached to the Greek Russian religious rites … due to their special poetic character.”40 Similarly, the well-known local researcher of Rusyns, Károly Mészáros (1821–1890), despite his Greek Catholic religious affiliation, and despite being listed as a professed Rusyn on the list of public servants of Ung County, wrote in his autobiography: “On account of my birth, upbringing, and political persuasion, I am Hungarian to such an extent that I do not know a single word in Russian or Slavic; however, because … I am a member of the Greek Catholic Church, and because I live among Russians, I am familiar with and appreciate the needs and legitimate wants of these people.”41 In the Transcarpathian region the connection between religion and ethnicity was generally accepted at the turn of the nineteenth century. According to the 1806 census of the Greek Catholic Eparchy of Munkács, the proportion of speakers of Rusyn as a mother tongue among Greek Catholics was 97 percent in Bereg County, 95 percent in Ung County, and 91 percent in Ugocsa County. The process of language shift began in the early nineteenth century. By the time of the 1910 national census, Rusyn language use and Greek Catholic religious affiliation had become separate: Hungarian-speaking Greek Catholics appeared while the proportion of Calvinists (the primary denomination of ethnic Hungarians in the region) remained the same or decreased.42 This process was the exact opposite of that in Galicia, where the national awakening of Rusyns occurred due to the spread of Ukrainian nationalism, and Greek Catholicism became the national church of the Ukrainian people.43

40  “… oroszul [ruszinul] (mint általában az alföldi gör. kath. papok) nem is tudott jól, sőt, csak arra volt büszke, hogy magyarnak vallhatá magát, a görögorosz egyházi szertartáshoz mindazonáltal, különösen annak fölséges költői jellege miatt, rendkívűleg ragaszkodott.” Mészáros Károly önéletrajza [Károly Mészáros’s autobiography], ed. Csaba Csorba (Debrecen: Hajdú-Bihar megyei múzeumok, 1974), 21. 41  “Én … születésem, neveltetésem s politikai érzületemnél fogva annyira magyar vagyok ugyan, hogy oroszul vagy szlávul egy hangot sem tudok; ámde, mivel … a keleti görög kath. egyházhoz tartozom, s mivelhogy ép[p]en itt az oroszság közepette élek, ezen népnek mind szükségeit, mind jogos igényeit jól ismerem s méltányolom.” Ibid., 69–70; See József Ruszoly, “Mészáros Károly és a rutén nemzetiségi törekvések 1861-ben” [Károly Mészáros and Rusyn minority struggles in 1861], in Hajdúsági Múzeum Évkönyve 5 [The Yearbook of Hajdúság Museum, 5], ed. Miklós Nyakas (Hajdúböszörmény, 1983), 130–1. 42  Róbert Keményfi, “Térbeli mozgáspályák, migrációs vallási jelenségek geográfiai vizsgálata” [A geographic analysis of trajectories in space and religious phenomena of migration], in Tradicionális migráció és kereskedelem az Alföldön [Traditional migration and trade in the Great Hungarian Plain], ed. László Ferenc Novák (Nagykőrös: Pest Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága, 2008), 584–5. 43  John-Paul Himka, Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), 6.

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Even though in the mountainous areas of Transcarpathia, Rusyns constituted an ethnic and linguistic majority, they had no unified and codified standard dialect in the late nineteenth century (nor have they had one since then).44 After the 1867 Compromise, Hungarian political thinking became dominated by the idea of achieving numerical dominance of Hungarians throughout the kingdom and the main means of achieving this was through education. In the late nineteenth century increasing state intervention in the matter of minority education was justified by the need of every citizen of Hungary to learn the state language, as proficiency in it was seen as a key to success in life. Beginning with the turn of the twentieth century, tendencies of Magyarization started encroaching on the use of Slavic languages in education.45 After the Compromise, Act XXXVIII of 1868 guaranteed the right to found and maintain church schools, which was how the Greek Catholic Church was able to provide elementary school education for Rusyn children. The state language, Hungarian, was not an obligatory component of elementary school education at that point. It was Act XVIII of 1879 and Act XXX of 1883 that made the teaching of the Hungarian language and Hungarian literature compulsory in elementary and primary schools; Act XV of 1891 prescribed that preschool children of non-Hungarian mother tongue had to be familiarized with Hungarian. During the lofty celebrations of the millennium of the founding of the Hungarian state in 1896, as part of what was called the “millennium school campaign,” a great number of schools using Hungarian as the language of instruction were founded, primarily in the linguistic border areas categorized as “endangered” from the national point of view. In the years of the millennial celebrations the belief became widespread that the increasingly assimilative goals of the Hungarian national and state ideology were most effectively served through the conscious deployment of Hungarian-language state schools. Although Hungarian native speakers constituted 51.4 percent of the total population of the country in the 1900/1901 school year, Hungarian was the language of instruction in 61.38 percent of all schools, while those instructing in the minority language made up the remaining 38.62 percent. Between 1880 and 1913 the number of elementary schools using Hungarian as a language of instruction almost doubled, while those using other languages fell proportionally. The number of schools using Rusyn and Slovak fell the most drastically.46 44  Michael Moser, “A New–Old Language In-Between Nations and States,” in The Palgrave Handbook, 135. 45  Pieter H. Van der Plank, “Effects of Habsburg Educational Policies Measured by Census Statistics,” Jezikoslovlje 13, no. 2 (2012): 373–93. 46  László Marácz, “Multilingualism in the Transleithanian Part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867–1918): Policy and Practice,” Jezikoslovlje 13, no. 2 (2012): 269–98.

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At the turn of the twentieth century, Hungary had 182 secondary schools with Hungarian as the language of instruction (92 percent), and 16 minority secondary schools (8 percent). Among school-age children, school attendance rose from 75 to 90 percent between 1872 and 1910; however, in 1905 still only 43 percent of the school-attending children completed sixth grade by the age of 12. In 1890, 44.5 percent of the total population of the country was literate: the proportion was 53.6 percent among Hungarians and 9.7 percent among Rusyns. In 1910, 75 percent of all Rusyns were still illiterate. Students of Rusyn nationality constituted 0.53 percent of students in tertiary education in 1900/1901. In 1881 the compulsory school graduation exams in the Rusyn language were abolished, just as the obligatory teaching of the language in church schools was in 1889. In 1898 the Greek Catholic Eparchy of Munkács received a letter from the government suggesting that they switch from the use of Cyrillic script to that of Latin. The diocese leadership rejected the idea, citing the centuriesold tradition of the use of Cyrillic script. Nevertheless, they were forced to publish a Rusyn-language Greek Catholic prayer book written in the Latin script in 1890, since a great number of the Rusyn students, who studied exclusively in Hungarian, were not familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet. At the turn of the twentieth century in Hungary there was no institution of secondary or tertiary education that used the Rusyn language as a language of instruction. In 1895/1896, Rusyn was taught as an optional subject in three secondary schools in Hungary: the state gymnasium in Munkács and the royal gymnasiums in Eperjes and Ungvár. In the early twentieth century the situation of minority education became even more difficult. In 1907 and 1908 a series of laws regarding schools were passed, named “Lex Apponyi” after the minister of religion and education. Among these, Act XXVII of 1907, which concerned the legal status of non-state elementary schools, triggered the most controversy. The law gave the state power to influence and control the curriculum of all schools, including parochial and minority-financed schools. Among the non-Hungarian regions of the country, it was the region populated by Rusyns that proved the least problematic in falling in with the new law: according to contemporary accounts, due to the remarkable results achieved in “teaching Hungarian speech” (a magyar beszéd tanításban), children were successfully channeled from church schools into tuition-free public schools run by the state.47 The non-Magyar nationalities of Hungary protested against assimilation to varying extents. The least resistance was put up by the Rusyns at this time,

47  See István Dolmányos, “A Lex Apponyi” [The Lex Apponyi], Századok 102, nos. 1–2 (1968): 527.

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despite the fact that modern historiography labels the second half of the nineteenth century as the time of the Rusyn “awakening,” “national rebirth,” and “nation-building.”48 There was no unity even in this project—either ideologically or linguistically. The “people” spoke the local regional dialect, whereas the intellectual elite was trilingual, with Russian, Ukrainian, and a “thin” (vékony),49 “weak” (gyenge),50 and “greatly underdeveloped” ( fölöttébb fejletlen)51 Rusyn consciousness fighting for primacy. The main struggle was between its ‘Russian’ and ‘Ukrainian’ wings, whereas the third “which wanted to develop the local folk dialect and literature constituted a tiny minority.”52 All this was partly due to the fact that in 1849 the Slavic population of the region directly met the Russian army passing through the area, which profoundly affected the Rusyn intellectuals.53 It is to this time that the greater support for the Russian language trend dates back.54 According to Rusyn-Ukrainian politician Avhustyn Voloshyn, “as soon as Moscow’s arms entered Hungary in 1849, their power became so appealing [to the region’s Slavs] that these gentlemen did not see any other Rus’ world than the Muscovite one. They started writing following the Great Russian model, did everything to use this unfamiliar, faraway language that was developed without us, and completely forgot to follow the old example of our ancestors.”55 48  Magocsi, “A Borderland of Borders,” 109–11. 49  See Dezső Kerecsényi, “Bonkáló Sándor: A kárpátaljai rutén irodalom és művelődés” [Sándor Bonkáló: Rusyn literature and culture in Subcarpathia], Századok 70, nos. 1–3 (1936): 467. 50  Dolmányos, “A Lex Apponyi,” 525. 51  György Spira, “Mészáros Károly önéletrajza előtt” [Before Károly Mészáros’s autobiography], Századok 111, no. 1 (1977): 590. 52  “… mely a hazai népnyelvet és irodalmat akarja tovább fejleszteni, törpe kisebbséget alkot.” Sándor Bonkáló, A kárpátaljai rutén irodalom és művelődés [Rusyn literature and culture in Subcarpathia] (Pécs, 1935), 62. 53  Yuriy Levenets et al., eds., Zakarpattia v etnopolityčnomu vymiri [Transcarpathia in ethnopolitical dimension] (Kyiv: IPiEND imeni I.F. Kurasa NAN Ukraïny, 2008), 122–50; Michael Moser: “Did Aleksandr Dukhnovych Strive to Create a Rusyn Literary Language?,” in Does a Fourth Rus’ Exist?: Concerning Cultural Identity in the Carpathian Region, ed. Paul Best and Stanislaw Stephien (Przemyśl and Higganum: South-Eastern Research Institute in Przemyśl, 2009), 63–80. 54  Anna Plišková, Rusynskyj jazyk na Slovensku. Korotkyj narys istoriï i sučasnosty [The Rusyn language in Slovakia: A summary of the past and present] (Prešov: Svitovyj Kongres Rusyniv, 2008), 20. 55  “Bo jak pryjšly 1849 roku moskovski zbroï na Uhorščynu, ony tak zaimponuvaly našym panam svojeju syloju, što pany ne vydily poza Moskovščynoju pered soboju žadnoho rus’koho svita. Počaly pysaty na velykorus’kyj pryklad, zmahalysia sym čužym, bez nas vyroblenym dalekym jazykom pysaty, ta zovsim zabuly prodovžyty staryj pryklad našyx bat’kiv.” Avhustyn Voloshyn, O pys’mennom jazyci Pidkarpats’kyx rusynov [On the written language of the Rusyns of Subcarpathia] (Užhorod, 1921), 38.

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Followers of the Russophile trend imagined a diglossic situation similar to Switzerland’s German-speaking regions. Switzerland’s German speakers use Swiss German in everyday situations (at home, among friends, in private correspondence, etc.), whereas in formal situations they use standard German (Hochdeutsch or Schriftsprache).56 Russophiles suggested the local regional varieties as a means of everyday oral communication and wanted to introduce (Great) Russian as the language of education and cultural life. The “high” variety would have been standard Russian, and the local regional varieties would have been the “low” varieties. As Russophile Igor Gusnaj stated, “acknowledging the shared Russian literary language and desiring its introduction in schools and offices, we do not want to reject the popular language. However, we do want to gradually purify this dialect of Hungarianisms, to enrich it and to develop it, but not through inventions and other provincialisms, which do not make any sense here. We want to settle the language question following the example of cultured Western European peoples, not otherwise. The French language does not hurt the Provençal, so the Russian language will not hurt us either.”57 Ukrainophiles used as their theoretical background the claim that the dialects of the Slavic population of Transcarpathia were identical with the Ukrainian dialects spoken on the northeastern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains and were, thus, dialects of Ukrainian rather than constituting a separate language. The identical nature of the varieties spoken on the eastern and western slopes of the Carpathians was proven primarily by texts written before the eighteenth century. Followers of this trend took for granted that the Slavs living on either side of the Carpathians were identical not only in language but also in ethnicity and culture. This was a new national and linguistic trend, propagating separation from the Russophile one, which was just emerging and gathering strength in the mid-nineteenth century, even on the other side of the Carpathians.58 56  C  harles A. Ferguson, “Diglossia,” Word 15 (1959): 325–40; Peter Trudgill, A Glossary of Sociolinguistics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 38–9. 57  “Priznavaja obščerusskij literaturnyj jazyk” i trebuja ego vvedenija v” školax” i urjadax my ot narodnago narěčija otklonitsja ne xotim”. No my xotim” èto narěčie osobenno posredstvom” pečati, populjariziruja zdorovyja idei, vyčistit’ medlenno ot” mad’jarizmov”, obogaščat’ i dopolnjat’ ego, no ne vydumkami ili drugimi provincializmami, dlja kotoryx” u nas” smysla nět”. My xotim” rěšyt’ naš jazykovyj vopros” po priměru zapadnoevropejskix” kulturnyx” narodov”, ne inače. Ne povredit’ francuzskij liter. jazyk” provansalcu, ne povredit’ russkij liter. jazyk i nam”.” Igor Gusnaj, Jazykovyj vopros v Podkarpatskoj Rusi [The language issue in the Subcarpathian Rus] (Prešov, 1921), 27. 58  Mihály Kapraly, “Russkij jazyk v Podkarpat’je (1938–1944)” [The Rusyn language in Subcarpathia, 1938–1944], Studia Russica 20 (2003): 176.

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The followers of the pro-Rusyn trend regarded the Rusyns a separate people and their language (i.e., the local Slavic dialects) as separate from the neighboring Slavic languages (Ukrainian, Slovak, and Polish). The Rusynophiles consisted primarily of the priests of the Greek Catholic Eparchy of Munkács. Their goal was to develop and codify a separate literary language based on the local regional dialects and the Church Slavonic variety. According to Hiador Sztripszky, the Rusyn peasant “has to be addressed in his own peasant language ... Since this peasant language has developed into a uniquely independent, Hungaro-Ruthenian form, which is distant from Ukrainian and even further from Russian, we do not need to do anything else but define, based on the rules developed on the basis of this folk language, a special Rusyn peasant language to be used in Hungary. It is very natural, however, that, just as it is different from those in content, its orthography should also be as far from Ukrainian as [it would be] from Russian.”59 These efforts were, however, made more difficult by the considerable differences between the local regional dialects, which meant that choosing one single dialect was not enough to solve the problem of codification. Even though at this time several Slavic peoples of Austria-Hungary and Europe were working on codifying their own standard varieties, the Rusyns of Hungary were not definitively affected by these examples.60 In fact, nobody was working on describing the language of the “people” in the form of a grammar. The produced grammars had a fairly vague connection to the folk language. Moreover, it was in the political interest of Hungarians to emphasize the separateness of the Rusyns (of Transcarpathia). Thanks to the efforts of Hungarian intellectuals, however, there was an intense transmission of information about the Rusyns living on the other side of the Carpathian Mountains. For instance, the leading historical journal Századok (Centuries), established in 1867 and still published today, regularly reported on works written by them. The descriptions are not always positive, as when, for instance, an author draws the conclusion that the Rusyns living on the other side of the

59  “Minthogy pedig ez a parasztnyelv sajátságosan önálló, hungaroruthen alakká fejlődött ki, a mely az ukrainaitól távol van, de a muszkától még messzebb esik, semmi egyebet nem kell tennünk, mint e népnyelvből kivont törvények alapján egy különleges magyar­ országi rusznák paraszti nyelvet megállapítani. Nagyon természetes azonban, hogy a miképpen amazoktól tartalomban különbözik, helyesírása is legyen minél messzibb úgy az ukrainaitól, mint a muszkától.” Hiador Sztripszky, “Moskophilismus, ukrainismus és a hazai rusznákok” [Muscophilism, Ukrainism and our local Rusnaks],” Budapesti Szemle 153 (1913): 294. 60  Moser, “A New—Old Language,” 126.

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Carpathians possess “little intelligence.”61 Then again, inadvertent compliments are also frequent. For instance, a review of one of Mykhailo Hrushevskyi’s books62 states that “however impossible it is to enjoy the language the book is written in, it can be useful for historical science.”63 It is further important to see how the peoples of Galicia and Bukovina viewed the language of the Slavic population of the Transcarpathian region. Belonging to the Austrian Empire, Galicia and Bukovina also witnessed the power struggle of Russophiles and Ukrainophiles in the early nineteenth century. Beginning with the mid-nineteenth century, Vienna was clearly against the former and supported the latter among the competing linguistic and national trends.64 In the introduction to the first of ten volumes summarizing Ukrainian history, Hrushevskyi identifies as the subject of his work the history of the people who “we think of as Ukrainians today” and who are sometimes called “little Russian” (malorus’kyj), “Southern Russian” (pivdenno-rus’kyj), “or simply Russian or Rusyn” (“prosto ‘rus’kyj’ abo ‘rusyns’kyj’”). According to the author, the ethnonym Ukrainian (ukraïns’kyj) entered general usage in the nineteenth century, and started to displace other designations in the early twentieth; however, in the western territories (Galicia, Bukovina, and regions that constituted a part of Hungary), the ethnonym Rusyn (rus’kyj) was still widely used. In the first volume of the grandiose work, Hrushevskyi takes the stance that the Ukrainian language is spoken in three states (Russia, Austria, and Hungary). In his opinion, regardless of whether Ukrainian is considered a separate language ( jazyk) or a regional dialect (narečie), it is a fact that, based on its varieties, Ukrainian is some kind of linguistic unit whose border varieties are undoubtedly very close to the neighboring Slavic languages—Slovak, Belorussian, Polish, and Russian—but whose central varieties differ from these languages in a number of phonetic, morphological, and syntactic characteristics.65 His opinion is thus that the Slavic people living in northeastern Hungary are Ukrainians, and that their language is Ukrainian. 61  Menyhért Érdujhelyi, “A szláv maticák. II.” [Slavic Maticas], Századok 29 (1895): 284. 62  Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, Opysy korolivščyn v zemliax rus’kyx XVI viku. Vol. 3. [A survey of royal Russian lands in the sixteenth century] (Lemberg, 1900). 63  “Bármilyen élvezhetetlen nyelven van is különben a könyv megírva, a történettudomány hasznot meríthet belőle …” Géza Petrássevich, “Descriptiones bonorum regalium in terris Ukraino-Russicis …,” Századok 35 (1901): 750. 64  Paul Robert Magocsi, Istorija Ukraïny [A history of Ukraine] (Kyiv, 2007), 374. 65  Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, Istorija Ukraïny-Rusy. Vol. 1. [The history of Ukraine-Rus’, part 1] (New York, 1954), 1.

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Other scholars also shared this opinion. Iakiv Holovatskyi wrote in his account of his travels in the territory of today’s Transcarpathia in 1839: “The population is Ukrainian on both sides of the Beskides, a continuation of the people of the Verkhovina; they are distinct in many features of dress and, in many places, also in language.”66 The Bukovinan Russophile Hryhorii Kupchanko wrote in his volume published in Vienna in 1897 that “the dialect (language) of the Hungaro-Russian people [govor” ( jazyk”) ugoro-russkogo naroda] is quite the same as the Russian dialect (language) of Galicia and Bukovina [podobnyj do galičeskogo i bukovinsogo russkogo govora ( jazyka)]. But since the Russian dialects of Galicia and Bukovina also have specific Galician-Russian or Bukovinian-Russian and very un-Russian—Polish, Romanian, Turkish, and other—words, the Hungaro-Russian people’s dialect also has many specific Hungaro-Russian and very un-Russian—Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, German, and other—words.”67 In the 1870s the Slavs living on the southern side of the Carpathians were written about by Mykhailo Dragomanov, and a decade later by Ivan Franko. The former was of the opinion that this region was as isolated from the neighboring Slavs as Australia was from Europe, and was dominated by Russophilia.68 Franko wrote the following in 1896: “We are not at all against our Hungaro-Russian brothers being good Hungarian patriots. With their places of residence, economic interests, and cultural affiliations they are integrally connected to Hungary, and we clearly understand that we cannot break this link; this is natural and follows from the geographical position. However, we believe that they have to be conscious Rusyns, a living and active part of the

66  “Naselennia po obydva boky Beskydu ukraïns’ke, nemovby prodovžennia verxovynciv; vono maje bahato svojeridnostej v odiazi, a šče bil’še u movi.” Quoted in Volodymyr Zadorozhnyi, “Ja. Holovac’kyj pro movnu sytuaciju na Zakarpatti u 1 pol. XIX st.” [Y. Holovatskyi on the linguistic situation of Transcarpathia in the first half of the nineteenth century], in Ukraïns’ka mova na Zakarpatti u mynulomu i siohodni [The Ukrainian language in Transcarpathia in the past and today] (Užhorod, 1993), 169. 67  “Govor” (jazyk”) ugoro-russkogo naroda sovsěm” podobnyj do galičeskogo i bukovinsogo russkogo govora (jazyka). No jak” v” galičeskom” i bukovinsom” russkom” govorě naxoditsia osobyj galičesko-russkij abo bukovinsko-russkij i sovsěm” nerusskij, imenno pol’skij, německij, romynskij, tureckij drugij slova, tak i v” govorě ugro-russkoho naroda jest’ mnoho osobnyx”, ugro-russkix” i sovsěm” nerusskix”, imenno slavackix”, pol’skix”, mad’jarskix”, německix” i drugix slov”.” Hryhorii Kupchanko, Uhorska Rus’ i jeji russki žyteli [Hungarian Rus’ and its population] (Vienna, 1897), 47. 68  Mykhailo Dragomanov, Halycko-rus’ke pys’menstvo [Galician Rusyn literacy] (Lemberg, 1876), 23.

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nation to which they belong through their origin, [and] historical and spir­ itual traditions.”69 The representatives of both the Russophile and Ukrainophile trends saw a brother nation in the Rusyns of Transcarpathia, with whom they shared a language and who reciprocated these sentiments. The person who created the political program of the Russophiles, Adolf Dobrianskyi, supported the idea of the federalization of Austria and Hungary in order to protect the rights of the minorities of the two halves of the Dual Monarchy. In his 1871 program he listed the places where the representatives of the Russian people (russkij narod) lived, including Russians “on the other side of the Carpathians, in the Kingdom of Hungary” as well.70 5 Jews After Ferenc Rákóczi’s failed war of independence, many Germans (Swabians) were resettled on the lands confiscated from the Rákóczi family, among other places, primarily in the Munkács area in the Transcarpathian region, forming new settlements wedged in-between the Rusyn villages. The settlers often felt that they found themselves “in the midst of savages.”71 However, they often failed to account for the fact that these local “savages” simply lived in a deprived border region. This border existence was also adopted by another group of new settlers, the Jews, who numbered only a few families in the region up to the mid-eighteenth century. By the late eighteenth century and especially 69  “My ne majemo ničoho proty toho, ščoby naši uhro-rus’ki braty buly dobrymy uhors’kymy patriotamy; svojim osidkom, ekonomičnymy i kul’turnymy interesamy vony tisno zvjazani z Uhorščynoju, i my rozumijemo dobre, ščo my ne v syli rozirvaty toj zvjazok, bo vin pryrodnyj, vyplyvaje z geografičnoho ïx položennia. Ta prote my dumajemo, ščo vony majut’ buty svidomymy rusynamy, buty žyvoju i dijal’noju častynoju toji naciï, do kotroï naležat’ svoïm poxodženniam, svojeju istoryčnoju i duxovnoju tradycijeju.” Ivan Franko, “I my v Jevropi. Protest halyc’kyx rusyniv proty madjars’koho tysiačolittia” [We are also in Europe: The protest of Galician Rusyns against the Hungarian millennial celebrations], in Zibrannia tvoriv v piatdesiaty tomax. Naukovi praci [Collected works, in fifty volumes. Scholarly works], vol. 46, bk. 2, Istoryčni praci (1891–1897) [Historical works (1891–1897)] (Kyiv, 1896/1996), 349–50. 70  Adolf Dobrianskyi, Proekt” političeskoj programy dlia Rusi avstrijskoj [Austrian Russia’s political program proposal] (Lemberg, 1871), 4–6. 71  Georgij Pavlenko, “A németek letelepedése Kárpátalján a 18–19. században (telephelyek, irányzatok, következmények)” [The settling of Germans in Subcarpathia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: Settlements, trends, and consequences], in Levéltári Évkönyv 12. (Nyíregyháza: Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg Megyei Önkormányzat Levéltárának kiadványai, 1997), 40.

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in the course of the nineteenth, Jewish people settled in smaller places away from the roads, in the mountains and in villages populated mostly by Rusyns.72 The modern history of the Jews in Hungary, emancipated at the time of the formation of Austria-Hungary in 1867, had begun less than a century and a half before. As a result of waves of migration from Moravia in the west, as well as from Galicia in the east, several hundred thousand Jews had settled in Hungary by the 1860s, first in the border counties. Jews arriving from the west had settled predominantly in western Hungary (including the western regions of today’s Slovakia), named Oberland by Hungarian Jews, whereas those arriving from the east settled in northeastern Hungary (the eastern half of today’s Slovakia as well as Transcarpathia) and northern Transylvania, referred to as Unterland. The dual source of in-migration fundamentally affected both the inner social and cultural division of Hungary’s Jewry and the non-Jewish majority society’s perception of the Jews. The “western” Jews were generally wealthier and more open to modernization and to rapprochement with Christian society than the mostly impoverished, often Hasidic, traditional in-migrants from the east who were often indifferent to the idea of integrating into Hungarian society. In late nineteenth-century society, the former were seen as fellow citizens of the Jewish faith who demonstrated remarkable progress in assimilating among Hungarians, whereas the latter were labeled “Galicianers,” and seen as incapable of comprehending the spirit of the times, and impeding and engangering the assimilation of the former.73 The Jewish population of Transcarpathia of 1869 almost doubled by 1910, from 64,903 to 128,791, as its proportion of the regional population rose from 11.2 to 15.2 percent. In the period of dualism, the view that the size of the Jewish population in the country, especially in its northeastern region, increased due to in-migration became widespread. However, statistics demonstrate that this was not the case: by this time in-migration ceased to play an important role in the demographic increase both across the kingdom and in Transcarpathia. In-migration from the west all but stopped between the 1850s and 1867, and the same happened in the case of in-migration from the east after 1867, following a decade and a half of a slight decrease in the intense flow of people. By 1910, half (specifically, 50.8 percent) of Hungary’s Jews lived in towns. In Transcarpathia the corresponding proportion was only 19.3 percent; however,

72  Géza Komoróczy, Zsidók az Északkeleti-Kárpátokban. Kárpátalja a 16. századtól a 19 század közepéig [Jews in the northeastern Carpathians: Carpatho-Russ from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century], Hungaria Judaica 31 (Budapest: Aposztróf, 2013), 17. 73  Konrád, “Demográfiai változások,” 15.

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this was still higher than the 8.1 percent proportion of town dwellers for the total population of the region.74 In the late nineteenth century, Transcarpathia’s Jewry was not suspected of dominating trade, as was widely believed elsewhere due to prejudice. Onethird were employed in industry, and one-quarter in agriculture, just like the majority of Christians in the region.75 Most Jews carried out physical labor in professions scarcely taken up by Jews elsewhere.76 Thus, a great part of the region’s Jewry was just as poor as most Rusyns. However, mainstream politics still made them into a scapegoat, creating a major focal point in the history of hatred.77 In the 1890s, under the aegis of the ministry of agriculture, led by Ignác Darányi, a so-called “Ruthenian” or “mountain campaign” was started in order to aid the Rusyns, who had been loyal to Hungarians “for a thousand years.” The mountain campaign clearly jeopardized the economic interests of the Jews of Transcarpathia. No real solutions—such as land reform or the distribution of land—were considered beyond leasing land for money to the poorest.78 This campaign was mired in antisemitism.79 The antisemitism of the era created an opposition between the Jews, the Hungarians (held to cultivate the land following a “moral economy”), and the ignorant and pious Rusyn peasants who were perceived in need of being “civilized.”80 In 1910, 35.2 percent of the Jewish population of the four northeastern counties of Hungary (i.e., the future Transcarpathian region) professed to be of Hungarian mother tongue, while the corresponding figure for the kingdom was 75 to 80 percent. The statistics of Transcarpathia were considered “marred” by the Máramaros area, since most of the Jews of Bereg, Ung, and Ugocsa counties considered Hungarian to be the “best and most happily spoken” language (cf. Table 2). The reason for this is that Máramaros was, on the one hand, the main 74  Ibid., 19–20. 75  Tamás Csíki, “Foglalkozási szerkezet és megélhetési módok” [Professions and ways of making a living], in Zsidók Kárpátalján, 28. 76  Komoróczy, Zsidók az Északkeleti-Kárpátokban [Jews in the northeastern Carpathians], 55–56, 80. 77  See Peter Gay, Cultivation of Hatred: The Bourgeois Experience, Victoria to Freud (New York: Norton, 1993). 78  Barna Gottfried, “A ‘rutén akció’ Bereg vármegyében, 1897–1901” [The “Ruthenian campaign” in Bereg County, 1897–1901], in Szabolcs-Szatmár-beregi Levéltári Évkönyv 13 [The Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County archive yearbook, 13] (Nyíregyháza, 1999), 199. 79  Miklós Konrád, “Az államhatalom és a régió más népességeinek viszonya a zsidósághoz” [The attitudes of the state and other ethnic groups of the region towards the Jewry], in Zsidók Kárpátalján, 109–14; John Lukacs, Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture (New York: Grove Press, 1988), 184. 80  Csíki, “Foglalkozási szerkezet,” 33.

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Speakers of Hungarian as a mother tongue in the Jewish population of Hungary between 1880 and 1910, based on census data Bereg 1890

Ung 1900

1910

1890

Máramaros 1900

1910

1890

1900

Ugocsa 1910

1890 1900 1910

the number 20,703 24,358 29,052 16,423 15,599 16,776 33,463 45,073 56,006 7,835 9,414 10,566 of Jews proportion 13.5 13.6 13.9 13.0 11.5 10.9 14.7 16.8 18.1 12,0 12.5 12.7 of Jews in the population, % 39.1 44.0 52.6 33.5 46.1 51.8 8.4 12.8 17,0 41.3 47.9 61.9 proportion of Jews of Hungarian mother tongue, % Source: Konrád, “Demográfiai változások” [Demographic changes], 18; and Konrád, “Az államhatalom és a régió” [The state and the region], 108

center of ultra-Orthodoxy and, on the other, the place with the lowest proportion of mother tongue speakers of Hungarian within the local population.81 Hence, until the very end of the nineteenth century, village Jews spoke Rusyn in addition to their mother tongue, Yiddish. The Hungarian authorities did not consider Yiddish a separate language, so the number of speakers of this language were not registered in censuses. In the 1900 and 1910 censuses, the leaflet printed for census workers stated that “both for mother tongue and other language spoken, only living languages can be entered, i.e., the Jewish or Hebrew languages cannot. All people of the Jewish religion who use a debased German language mixed with Hebrew (that is, jargon) should be entered as speakers of German.”82 This at least partly explains why the censuses of the Austro-Hungarian period, between 1867 and the First World War, showed a considerable German mother tongue population in all

81  Konrád, “Az államhatalom és a régió,” 107–8. 82  “Úgy anyanyelv, valamint más beszélt nyelv gyanánt is mindig csak élő nyelv írható be, ennél fogva a zsidó vagy héber nyelv nem mutatható ki. Az ország némely vidékén található zsidó vallású egyéneknél tehát, akik a héberrel kevert, rontott német nyelvet, az úgynevezett jargont használják, a német nyelvet kell bejegyezni.” Árpád E. Varga, Népszámlálások a jelenkori Erdély területén [Censuses in the territory of present-day Transylvania] (Budapest: Regio—MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 1992), 15–16.

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Figure 4

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The proportion of German mother tongue speakers in the region between 1880 and 1910 Source: Digital Census Database, Central Statistical Office of Hungary. Accessed September 1, 2016

four counties examined (cf. Figure 4). Máramaros County, for instance, had a 16.6 percent proportion of “German” speakers in 1910. We know from Uriel Weinrech’s 1964 study83 that the dialect of Yiddish used in Transcarpathia is a “central Yiddish” dialect, with some western Yiddish elements.84 The reason for the dialect mixture was the heavy language contact between the dialects of the two groups of in-migrants.85 As a result of the dialect mixture, Yiddish speakers from Transcarpathia were easy to recognize in other parts of Hungary and in Galicia because of their language.86 Despite the fact that the linguistic assimilation of Hungary’s (including Transcarpathia’s) Jewry happened rapidly during this era, in the Jewish communities of the region the use of Yiddish was believed to be a strong factor of resistance in the face of secularization and assimilation.87 This is the reason why Yiddish has been preserved today as a language of everyday life in

83  Uriel Weinreich, “Western Traits in Transcarpathian Yiddish,” in For Max Weinreich on His Seventieth Birthday: Studies in Jewish Languages, Literature, and Society (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1964), 245–64. 84  Ibid., 253. 85  Ibid., 256. 86  Szonja Ráhel Komoróczy, “Nyelvhasználat” [Language use], in Zsidók Kárpátalján, 39–40. 87  Weinreich, “Western Traits,” 261; Komoróczy, “Nyelvhasználat” [Language use], 39–40.

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Hungarian ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish families of Transcarpathian origin now residing in Jerusalem, Brooklyn, London, or Antwerp.88 6

The Roma

The Roma were first recorded in Hungary in the fifteenth century, when Hungary served as a transit country for them on their way to Western Europe. The Roma typically did not mix with the local population, and they typically lived outside of local settlements. Roma were distributed unevenly in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary: they traditionally settled in the southwestern and northeastern parts of the country. In the Austro-Hungarian period the authorities tried to prevent them from “roaming” and “wandering” within the country and attempted to force them to settle. (By this time, they were not allowed to enter Austria at all.) Roma gradually became centered in the Carpathian Basin, where they now constitute one of the largest regional ethnic groups,89 with roughly one-third of the world’s Roma population living here. Romani grievances were largely ignored by the mainstream society until the 1930s. The steadily decreasing number of wandering Roma was considered an “issue” of public health and public safety.90 In Bereg County, among other places, according to an account by Aladár Ballagi from 1877, “Gypsies were successfully stopped—like shifting sand—but these settlers in every other respect are the exact replicas of their wandering peers. Therefore, even in those cases when the issue is converting these to more civilized ones: we have to take into account how problematic it is to be in contact with them.” Converting them to Catholicism was also an issue, because “the Gypsies are people more heathen than the heathen” who were seen as “floundering” at the edge.91 In the second half of the nineteenth century, language was considered the most important characteristic of a nationality group by the authorities. Beginning with the 1880 census, census questions inquired about mother tongue and 88  Ibid., 40. 89  Károly Kocsis and Patrik Tátrai, Changing Ethnic Patterns of the Carpatho-Pannonian Area from the Late 15th until the Early 21st Century (Budapest: HAS RCAES Geographical Institute, 2015), 21–8. 90  Ernő Kállai, “Cigány csoportok Európában és Magyarországon” [Roma groups in Europe and Hungary],” in A romológia alapjai [The basics of Roma studies], ed. Anna Orsós (Pécs: PTE BTK Neveléstudományi Intézet Romológia és Nevelésszociológia Tanszék, 2015), 32–5. 91  Aladár Ballagi, “A cigányok vallásáról [On the religion of the Gypsies],” Protestáns Egyházi és Iskolai Lapok 20, no. 38 (1877): 1199–203.

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the ability to speak other languages, that is, other languages commonly spoken in Hungary as well as foreign languages, with these questions remaining unchanged until 1930. Questions regarding nationality first appeared in 1941.92 Scholarly interest turned towards the Roma in as early as the nineteenth century, when dictionaries and grammars were compiled. However, the language spoken by the Roma was not accepted as a recognized language, and so census takers recorded them in the “other” category, whereas the linguistically assimilated Roma were added to the category of whatever language they spoke. Even though several countries, including modern Hungary and Ukraine, use the category “Roma mother tongue” today, it is important to note that there is no such thing as a “Roma language”: this label can be regarded as a collective category at best, which obliterates, primarily on the basis of visible ethnic features, the differences that exist in the community identified as the Roma, regarding it in a homogeneous and oversimplified way.93 The Roma of the Carpathian Basin speak two different languages and, therefore, form two different linguistic communities. The two languages (which include various dialects) are (1) Romani, a language of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family, and (2) Boyash, a Romance language.94 Speakers of both usually speak one or more other languages with varying proficiency, and sometimes as a second mother tongue. Assimilated Roma form another distinct group, who no longer speak their original language but rather only the one that they adopted.95 The very first survey of the Roma of Hungary in 1893 showed that the mother tongue and religion of the Roma mirrored those of the majority ethnic group dominant in a given region.96 From the perspective of the number of speakers and their geographical distribution, Romani is one of the most important minority languages in Europe today, as a variety of it is spoken by most bilingual Roma (besides the respective majority language). It is a non-territorial language: its language community cannot be connected closely to any political region. There are four main dialect groups of Romani: the Balkan, the Vlach, the Central, and the Northern. 92  See Lajos Thirring, Az 1869–1980. évi népszámlálások története és jellemzői. I. (1869–1910) [The history and characteristics of censuses between 1869 and 1980, vol 1: 1869–1910] (Budapest, 1983). 93  Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov, “Identity and Language of the Roma (Gypsies) in Central and Eastern Europe,” in The Palgrave Handbook, 27. 94  Anna Szalai, “A cigány kisebbség nyelvei: szociolingvisztikai aspektusok” [The languages of the Rom minority: Sociolinguistic aspects], in A romológia alapjai, 117–21. 95  Marushiakova and Popov, “Identity and Language,” 27. 96   Péter Szuhay, “Hungarian-speaking Gypsies in the Carpathian Basin,” in Minority Hungarian Communities, 618–19.

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The Roma of Slovakia, southern Poland, and Transcarpathia speak the varie­ ties belonging to the northern subgroup of the Central dialect group.97 In the Transcarpathian region the Hungarian Gypsy (Romungro, Carpathian Gypsy, and Ungrika Rom) dialects and Slovakian Gypsy (Servika Roma) dialects are spoken widely, all of which display features of Hungarian and Slavic languages as the result of language contact. The Roma constitute a significant ethnic presence in the Transcarpathian region to this day. What is more, they now play a considerable role in preserving the numbers of the local Hungarian population as well.98 The motif of the Roma’s attachment to Hungarians has surfaced periodically throughout history. A news report from 1932, for instance, notes how one can find “the last traces of Hungarian rule, the Gypsies” in the Roma quarter of Ungvár, people who are so strongly attached to Hungarians that they are almost “Hungarian in their irredentism.”99 Recently, both Ukrainian and Russian sources have referred to the wandering Roma (not in Transcarpathia but to the east of it) as “Hungarians” (Madjari), without any qualifying adjective, regarding them as a separate Roma group.100 Today almost two-thirds of the Roma of Transcarpathia are Hungarian mother tongue speakers. After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the Roma communities of the Kingdom of Hungary found themselves in several different countries. According to Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov’s analysis, the fact that newly drawn state borders separated Roma communities that had previously lived in one state resulted in the emergence of new elements of their respective identities.101 It is interesting to note that today the Hungarian-speaking Roma of Ukraine and Slovakia (that is, of the northeastern region of historic Hungary) orient themselves towards the local Hungarian minorities rather than the Hungarian-speaking Roma communities of Hungary.102 97  Anna Szalai, “Egységesség? Változatosság? A cigány kisebbség és a nyelvi sokféleség” [Unified? Variable? The Gypsy minority and linguistic diversity], Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 103 (2006): 163–204. 98  László Braun, István Csernicskó, and József Molnár, Magyar anyanyelvű cigányok/romák Kárpátalján [Gypsies/Roma of Hungarian mother tongue in Transcarpathia] (Ungvár: PoliPrint, 2010), 108–10. 99  Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [National Archives of Hungary]. Magyar Távirati Irodai hírei 1920–1956. Lapszemle, 1932. május 12. 100  Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov, “Ethnic identities and Economic Strategies of the Gypsies in the Countries of the Former USSR,” in Nomaden und Sesshafte— Fragen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, ed. Wolfgang Holzwarth und Thomas Herzog (Halle: Orientwissenschaftliches Zentrum, der Martin-Luther-Universität, 2003), 289–310. 101  Marushiakova and Popov, “Identity and Language,” 48. 102  Ibid., 49.

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7

Multilingualism and Polyglossia in Everyday Life

Contrary to the expectations of the Hungarian government in Budapest related to assimilation, language shift towards Hungarian in the first decade of the twentieth century was not in an advanced stage among national minorities living in the northeastern region of the Kingdom of Hungary. Increasingly widespread bilingualism is an essential precondition of such a language shift.103 However, census data within the period discussed suggests that although the proportion of those speaking the state’s official language among Rusyns rose from 5.5 percent in 1880 to 14 percent in 1910, still the knowledge of Hungarian did not spread quickly among Slavic speakers in the analyzed four counties. In 1910 the proportion of Hungarian-speaking Rusyns reached 25 percent only in one of these counties, Bereg County. Moreover, the rate of Hungarian native speakers with Rusyn knowledge was nearly of the same proportion as vice versa. For instance, according to the 1910 census data, nearly a quarter of Hungarian native speakers in Máramaros County spoke Rusyn, whereas only 8 percent of the Rusyn population spoke Hungarian (Table 3). Table 3

Percentage of Rusyns and Hungarians that mutually speak each other’s language

1880

1890

1900

1910

Rusyns in Hungarians Rusyns in Hungarians Rusyns in Hungarians Rusyns in Hungarians Hungarian in Rusyn Hungarian in Rusyn Hungarian in Rusyn Hungarian in Rusyn Ung Bereg Ugocsa Máramaros Kingdom of Hungary

2.9 5.3 19.6 3.4 5.5

2.7 7.9 12.8 17.9 0.3

4.1 10.7 17.4 5.6 7.3

3.7 7.6 11.5 22.2 0.3

8.1 15.2 18.7 4.8 8.4

5.0 7.9 15.4 18.6 0.3

16.0 25.6 22.0 8.0 14.0

8.9 14.1 15.6 24.4 0.5

Source: Népszámlálási Digitális Adattár—Központi Statisztikai Hivatal Könyvtára (Digital Database of Census Data—Hungarian Central Statistical Office Library) https://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/collection/ kozponti_statisztikai_hivatal_nepszamlalasi_digitalis_adattar/

103  Susan Gal, Language Shift: Social Determinants of Linguistic Change in Bilingual Austria (San Francisco: Academic Press, 1979).

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Therefore, Hungarian as the language of power did not become prestigious among the local Slavic speakers. Assimilatory policies of the Kingdom of Hungary had a limited impact in the peripheral regions due to deficiencies of state administration. Acquisition of each other’s language was shaped by local majority-minority relations instead of the politics of assimilation. In everyday life, language knowledge was influenced not by majority-minority relations in a sociological sense, but by factors of which language’s speakers were in majority, and which language proved to be “useful” locally in the given settlement or region. If language acquisition would have been determined by power relations, then the rate of those speaking the other’s language should have been much lower among the Hungarians and much higher among the Rusyns. István Horváth, who has analyzed official census data of Transylvania in the same period, came to similar conclusions. As he argued, it is more than likely that the Kingdom of Hungary did not have an overall logistic and technical toolbox (infrastructural power) on the basis of which it could have transformed thoroughly the language order of the Transylvanian society.104 Susan Gal has also concluded that Magyarization (magyarosítás) as an educational policy goal at the turn of the twentieth century could not be implemented effectively due to the lack of resources.105 8 Conclusion In the present study we have examined, from a historical and sociolinguistic perspective, what kind of nation-building processes and linguistic ideologies affected the linguistic and ethnic development of the Hungarian, Rusyn, Jewish, and Roma communities living in the Transcarpathian northeast corner of the former Kingdom of Hungary, at the time when it was part of AustriaHungary. The focus of the research has been the small communities of the region, divided between several power centers. The ideology of monolingual nationalism and the ideal of the homogeneous nation-state became widespread throughout Europe in the nineteenth 104  István Horváth, “Tündérkert vagy népek börtöne? 19. századvégi narratívák az erdélyi többnyelvűségről” [Fairy garden or prison of peoples? Narratives on multilingualism in Transylvania at the end of the nineteenth century], in A közép-európaiság dicsérete és kritikája [The praise and criticism of Central Europeanness], ed. Csilla Fedinec, Zoltán Illyés, Attila Simon, and Balázs Vizi (Pozsony: Kalligram, 2013), 463. 105  Susan Gal, “Polyglot Nationalism: Alternative Perspectives on Language in 19th Century Hungary,” Langage et société 136, no. 2 (2011): 31‒54.

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century. The new states established as the result of the post-WWI peace proc­ ess referenced the principle of national self-determination in their founding. Prior to this development, the multinational Kingdom of Hungary as part of the multinational Austro-Hungarian Monarchy already attempted to find as much space within the structures of the state as possible for the Hungarian language, ethnicity, and culture.106 As discussed in this chapter, the nationalizing state also used censuses organized for this purpose. “Hiding” Jewish and Roma populations in language-related data increased the rate and number of Hungarian and German native speakers, reducing the linguistic diversity of the population. This practice is still applied by states today that govern territories that once belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary, whereby censuses could indicate only one mother tongue, and state officials register bilinguals as monolinguals and categorize them into a certain ethnolinguistic group, further reducing linguistic diversity.107 The nationalizing state regarded the statistical increase of Hungarian native speakers as important because mother tongue was considered to be an essential marker of national identity. In addition to the category of “mother tongue” that had been introduced during the 1880 census, the Hungarian Statistical Office also introduced the category of languages spoken beside the mother tongue. The reason was, in the words of the director of the census office, that “if our nation has assimilatory capacity, then answers to these questions should illuminate how many foreign language-speaking nationals or inhabitants have acquired the state language, knowing that those who speak our sonorous language join this nation and will no longer be stran­ gers in this homeland.”108 In his book The Habsburg Empire: A New History, Pieter Judson stated, with reference mostly to the Austrian part of the monarchy, that ethnic groups speaking different languages did not necessarily associate with their nationalist activists’ political programs. Rather, the understanding of linguistically based cultural difference emerged due to the actions of those activists at the

106  R  obert J.W. Evans, “Language and State Building: The Case of the Habsburg Monarchy,” Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004), 1–24. 107  Susan Gal, “Polyglot Nationalism,” 31‒54. 108  “… ha van nemzetünknek asszimiláló képessége, úgy ki kell az e kérdésre adott válaszokból tűnni, hány idegen ajkú honpolgár vagy ittlakó sajátította el az állam nyelvét, jól tudván mindnyájan, hogy a ki egyszer zengzetes nyelvünket beszéli, az összeforr e nemzettel és többé nem idegen e hazában.” Károly Keleti, “Magyarország nemzetiségei a 1880-ki népszámlálás alapján” [Nationalities of Hungary on the basis of 1880 census], MTA Értesitője. Értekezések a társadalomtudományok köréből, 7 (Budapest: MTA, 1885), 10.

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time when the rural population largely remained indifferent to these actions.109 The differentiation was especially difficult in villages where bilingualism was widespread and the inhabitants could not be clearly separated on either a linguistic or religious basis. “Linguistic borders” were identified on the basis of the census data on language use, and nationalist activists wanted to make the inhabitants aware of these borders.110 It is obvious that the popular leaflets and newsletters used by them could not reach everybody in the Austrian half of the empire, and did not have effect on people who had already fallen out of the education system (e.g., the adults who did not go to school at all and were illiterate).111 This, of course, is not unprecedented in the history: “Language censuses are an important political instrument that brings together linguistic and socio-cultural categories to construct a supposedly factual picture of nations through numbers.”112 National indifference was also linguistic indifference. Common people were used as a means for their national representatives’ political programs. Artificially induced top-down nationalism and linguistic and cultural movements pressured the Monarchy, too. The 1868 law on nationalities granted individual language use and cultural rights to non-Hungarian inhabitants and the Hungarian nation-state remained multiethnic. However, when compared to Cisleithania, Hungary acted as a strongly centralizing state though its Magyarizaiton policies that aimed to weaken ethno-regional aspirations, but actually increased inner tensions, thereby significantly contributing to the disintegration of the empire. The subsequent events that began in late 1918 broke up the historical and cultural space of the northeastern corner of the Kingdom of Hungary, which was in many respects different from both the Austrian half of the empire and the rest of Hungary and constituted one of the unique “inbetween” spaces of Europe. Transcarpathia was divided among successor states of the empire, which also created a new minority in the region: Hungarians.

109  P  ieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016), 39. 110  Pieter M. Judson, “The Limits of Nationalist Activism in Imperial Austria: Creating Frontiers in Daily Life,” in Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European Experience, ed. Johannes Feichtinger and Gary B. Cohen (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014). 111  Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 22. 112   Alexandre Duchêne and Philippe N. Humbert, “Surveying Languages: The Art of Governing Speakers with Numbers,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 252 (2018): 1.

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The nationalism that emerged in the eighteenth century placed the nation before the estate, class, and religion, and connected it strongly to the issue of language. Until the late twentieth century, Transcarpathia was a typically peripheral region. In the late nineteenth century almost the entire population of today’s Transcarpathia was made up of four different communities: the Hungarians, who followed western Christianity and its cultural norms; the Rusyns, who populated the area since the Middle Ages and maintained ties to both western and eastern Christianity; the Jews, who settled in the Carpathian Basin continuously since the sixteenth century; and the Roma, who constituted a peripheral community in the periphery. The Rusyn community looked for its place in the system, having found itself in the zone of several power centers at once. While its intellectuals were attracted by the prospect of assimilation to Hungarian society, the dilemma remained of choosing between the Russian (Panslavic) and Ukrainian languages and identities on the one hand, and the development and strengthening of a local, regional identity and language on the other. At this time (and practically up to the present) the main issue with the Rusyns has been how natural development and political influence would decide the future of “the Rusyn language.” Jews in the center of the Kingdom of Hungary were on the road to assimilation; however, the situation in Transcarpathia (and the rest of the periphery) was different. The traditional polyglossia of the Jewish population was still present at the turn of the twentieth century, when in other parts of the country it had already disappeared. While the Yiddish language was an important marker of identity, the proportion of Hungarian speakers gradually rose among the Jewish population of the region. The Roma living in the region were no longer unified at this time, either: a considerable proportion of them assimilated into the group in whose vicinity they lived. In this ethnically diverse region the conditions for the development of polyglossia were given. However, at the turn of the twentieth century, the claim of László Marácz113 and Bálint Varga114 about Hungary at this time is fitting also in respect to Transcarpathia: the population, ethnically heterogeneous at the macro-level, broke up into nearly completely homogeneous linguistic groups. As is evidenced by census data, a great majority of the population was able to communicate solely in their mother tongue, and monolingualism

113  Marácz, “Multilingualism,” 295. 114  Bálint Varga, “Multilingualism in Urban Hungary, 1880–1910,” Nationalities Papers 42, no. 6 (2014): 966.

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was, according to Ágoston Berecz,115 probably even more widespread in reality than statistics might suggest. As for Transcarpathia’s linguistic development, researchers have concluded that the territory has an absence of a common language: there is no language in the region that is known to everybody regardless of age, gender, level of education, place of residence, and religion.116 It seems that the roots of this linguistic situation originated in the AustroHungarian period.

115  Ágoston Berecz, The Politics of Early Language Teaching: Hungarian in the Primary Schools of the Late Dual Monarchy (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014), 29–30. 116  Csernicskó, Államok, 524; István Csernicskó and Viktória Ferenc, “Hegemonic, Regional, Minority and Language Policy in Subcarpathia: A Historical Overview and the PresentDay Situation,” Nationalities Papers 42, no. 3 (2014): 414–16; István Csernicskó and Petteri Laihonen, “Hybrid Practices Meet Nation-State Language Policies: Transcarpathia in the Twentieth Century and Today,” Multilingua 35, no. 1 (2016): 15.

Chapter 10

Education in Habsburg Borderlands: The K.u.K. Staats-Oberrealschule in the Austrian Silesian Town of Teschen (1900–1921) Matthäus Wehowski 1 Introduction The rise of nationalism was the primary political issue of the Habsburg Monarchy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Educated elites all over the empire tried to spread “national consciousness” to the public. The masses of illiterate peasants were to be made “aware” of their national origins with the help of education and literature. At the same time, the Habsburg state established structures for mass education, assuming control over the schools (which had been mostly controlled by the church before1) and expanding education and the professional training of teachers. This allowed the majority of the empire’s children to attend schools and learn how to read and write,2 which was crucial for the modernization of the empire’s administration and military. As the goals of nationalists (spreading national consciousness) and the imperial administration (loyalty to the empire) could not be achieved at the same time, education became a major battleground. The question of “minority languages” in particular engendered severe conflicts. The two parts of the Empire which emerged after the Compromise of 1867 handled this issue very differently: The Kingdom of Hungary tried to establish Hungarian as the dominant language and suppressed the education of minorities in their native tongue.3 The 1  Marzena Bogus, “Szkoły i szkolnictwo w Cieszynie w latach 1848–1918” [The school system in Teschen between 1848–1918], in Cieszyn w czasach nowożytnych (1528–1848) [Teschen in the modern age], vol. 2, Dzieje Cieszyna pd pradziejów do czasów współczesnych [The history of Teschen from prehistory to the present time], ed. Wacław Gojniczek et al. (Cieszyn: Książnica Cieszyńska, 2010), 151. 2  One of the most important milestones was the Reichsvolksschulgesetz of 1869, which established a non-confessional education for children and extended obligatory school attendance to eight years. It also regulated the education of teachers. Hannelore Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit im österreichischen Unterrichtswesen 1867–1918 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1995), 43. 3  Joachim von Puttkammer, “Strukturen und Deutungsmuster im ungarischen Schulwesen 1867–1914,” in Zentren, Peripherien und kollektive Identitäten in Österreich-Ungarn, ed. Endre

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004407978_011

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Austrian crown lands of Cisleithania offered more room for diversity: in 1876 the administrative court of Austria enshrined the establishment and maintenance of Nationalitätenschulen (“nationality schools,” sometimes referred to as “minority schools”), in which officially recognized linguistic minorities were taught in their native language.4 However, this law caused problems in ethnically “mixed” regions with numerous minority groups. Every “nationality” wanted its own school and tried to claim as many pupils as possible as members of their national group. Sometimes this led to a “war over every schoolchild” that amplified national disagreements. Secondary schools (Gymnasien) in particular started to become hotspots of nationalism, causing trouble with the central government and neighbors of other nationality. Towards the end of the century, schools with a heterogeneous national composition of students became rare, a development that led to a stronger division of society. The high number of small “nationality schools” also overstretched the financial capabilities of many communities and caused additional conflicts over municipal finances.5 In this chapter, the education practices in the border regions will be examined. The idea is to study a case at the periphery of the Habsburg Monarchy as an example not of a “lesser” but rather a distinctive development. In the latest literature on empires, scholars have demanded a scrutinization of the dominating idea of “center” and “periphery.” Depending on the question and point of view, some centers can indeed turn out to be peripheries, and vice versa.6 Therefore, it is necessary to regard the “delayed” development of nationalism in this region not as “backwards,” but as a process connected to the characteristics of Austrian Silesia as a periphery in the late Habsburg Empire. In the lands of the Bohemian Crown (Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia), the “national question” was especially controversial. The Czechs had a robust industry and a strong middle class. Since the late nineteenth century there was a high demand for the acceptance of the Czech language in schools and administration. Prague in particular became a “center” of Czech Hárs, Wolfgang Müller-Funk, Ursula Reber, and Clemens Ruthner (Tübingen: Francke, 2006), 103. 4  As long as the parents of 40 children in a community demanded it, a “nationality school” had to be established by the communal authorities (cf. Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit, 45). 5  Ibid. 6  Endre Hárs, Wolfgang Müller-Funk, Ursula Reber, and Clemens Ruthner, “Zentren peri­ pher. Vorüberlegung zu einer Denkfigur,” in Zentren, Peripherien und kollektive Identitäten in Österreich-Ungarn, ed. Hárs, Müller-Funk, Reber, and Ruthner (Tübingen: Francke, 2006), 1–15.

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nationalism. However, unlike the Hungarian part of the empire, a Bohemian kind of Compromise was never arranged, and the crown lands never gained full political autonomy. Because of the differences between the German and Czech populations in Bohemia, all attempts to enhance the status of the Czech language failed. One example of such friction occurred during the 1897 Badeni Crisis: Prime Minister Kasimir Felix Badeni allowed communities with a Czech majority to use the Czech language in administration. German-language administrators in those communities also would be forced to use Czech. This decision led to intense protests by the German deputies in Vienna, a complete blockade of the parliament, and nearly to civil war. Finally, Badeni was forced to repeal the law and to resign from his position in the same year. Bohemia thus never reached an autonomous administrative level suitable to its economic power, and the Czech language remained marginalized. The issue of Czechlanguage use was never resolved and Bohemian schools remained a battleground for nationalist conflict until the end of the Habsburg Empire in 1918.7 Austrian Silesia was different: it belonged to the Bohemian Crown and was inhabited by a nationally and confessionally heterogeneous population of Germans, Poles, and Czechs. Due to its location at the borderland, it never had to deal with the same intensity of national conflicts as the centers of Vienna or Prague, despite occasional tensions. Also, it had a strong regional “Silesian” movement, which gained some traction during the transition period after the First World War.8 In this case, it can be viewed as a periphery. Unlike the core parts of the Bohemian crown lands, Austrian Silesia still possessed many heterogeneous schools even at the beginning of the twentieth century. The separation of nationalities within the school system started as late as 1904, and there was a greater proliferation of national agendas especially in the Gymnasien.9 Bucking this trend, many middle schools and particularly schools with an orientation towards natural sciences remained heterogeneous. This study will not examine the entire area of Austrian Silesia and its school politics, but rather take schools only in the town of Teschen (Cieszyn/Těšín)10

7  Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit, 169. 8  Dariusz Jerczyński, Józef Kożdoń (1873–1949) przywódca śląskiej Partii Ludowej, a kwestia narodowości śląskiej na Śląsku Cieszyńskim i Opawskim w XIX i XX stuleciu [Josef Kożdoń (1873–1949): the leader of the Silesian People’s Party, and the question of Silesian nationality in Teschen and Troppau, Silesia, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries] (Zabrze: Narodowa Oficyna Śląska, 2013). 9  Ibid., 170. 10  Here and further in the text, historical German names of cities and towns will be used.

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as examples. The K. K. Staats-Oberrealschule11 will serve as the main case study for the development of a public school with students from different nationalities, with other schools providing additional points of comparison. The time frame will span the period of accelerated nationalization after 1900 and extend to the First World War, the dissolution of the empire, and its aftermath. The main sources under analysis are the school yearbooks that were published at the end of every school year.12 They contain the most important numbers and facts in respect to the development of the school: the pupils’ native language, place of birth, religion, and so forth. They also mention notable events, such as political or religious celebrations, details about teachers, and even examination topics. Additional sources are the Gestionsprotokolle (School Management Protocols) of the directorate,13 which contain less detailed information than the yearbooks and focus more on the school’s infrastructure. Multilingualism and national diversity were an important part of the Habsburg Empire’s imperial structure. This chapter aims to examine changes in policy regarding language and education during the final years of its exist­ ence and the formation of new states after the First World War, in which the difficult issues of language, nationality, and regional identity all needed to be addressed. The K. K. Staats-Oberrealschule serves as an exemplary case of how these issues were tackled, also demonstrating how imperial authorities tried to support the idea of loyalty towards the Habsburg Empire as a whole during a time of nationalist struggle. 2

The K. K. Staats-Oberrealschule as an Example of Heterogeneity in a Period of Nationalism

The K. K. Staats-Oberrealschule in Teschen was in some ways an exception to other schools in the region, as it stayed heterogeneous during the Great War and even after 1918. The school itself existed from 1851 until 1922. At first it consisted only of supplemental classes added to an elementary school, as a lower-level, Untere Realschule. After 1870 it received its own building and 11  Oberrealschule was a secondary school which usually focused on technical education, while the Gymnasium was focused on humanities. 12  These yearbooks were originally created as informational brochures for the support association of the school (Schülerlade), which helped to finance schoolbooks and other teaching materials. Januschke, Jahresberichte (1901), 52. 13   Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach, Oddział w Cieszynie [National archive in Katowice, dept. Cieszyn], 70 Direktion der K.u.K. Staats-Realschule zu Teschen, 15 / 16 (Gestionsprotokolle).

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administrative structure and five years later it was transformed into a higherlevel, Ober-Realschule, which originally consisted of seven grades and nine teachers. After graduation, pupils had the opportunity to study at a university in certain (mostly technical) fields. The school expanded quickly, from 146 students in 1870 to 493 in 1904. As a result, the school moved to a larger building (the former Catholic Gymnasium) on the town’s main street in 1873. By 1909, it required the provision of additional rooms.14 The school was finally dissolved and combined with the former Albrecht-Gymnasium, forming the Deutsches Staatsgymnasium in 1922.15 This new school was mostly a “normal” minority school for Germans after 1922, without its former heterogeneity. In 1901, Principal Hans Januschke16 held a speech at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the school’s existence in which he touched on the history and goals of the Ober-Realschule. As he explained, the most important agenda of the school was to teach natural sciences and humanist culture in order to improve the living conditions of society. He mentioned the knowledge of hygiene17 as an important tool to fight diseases such as tuberculosis.18 This was why the school’s focus lay on preparation for a field of study in engineering or the natural sciences, with chemistry, physics, mathematics, and natural history as the most important subjects. Besides this idealistic view, Januschke also mentioned the mundane reasons for the establishment of the school by the imperial government—it was important to provide skilled personnel for the military academies and industry. He stated that the graduates of the Ober-Realschule usually performed as well as their counterparts from the Gymnasium at the military academies or higher technical schools.19 Around 1900, the local nationalities started to split up into their own secondary schools. After a long struggle with the town’s administration, a Gymnasium 14  Bogus, “Szkoły i szkolnictwo,” 159. 15  Moritz Landwehr von Pragenau, Programm des (Vereinigten k.k. Albrecht-Gymnasiums) in Teschen (Cieszyn: Dyrekcja Gimnazjum, 1922), 2. 16  Januschke was principal from 1890 to 1901 and taught mathematics and physics. In 1902, the French teacher Karl Prochaska followed him as principal. Rudolf Alscher, Jahresberichte der k.k. Staats-Oberrealschule (Cieszyn: K. und K. Hofbuchdruckerei Karl Prochaska, 1902), 22. 17  The prevention of diseases was an important topic. For example, every student had to clean and disinfect his shoes at the entrance. The room temperature and the health of the students was checked regularly. Even the cuspidor was disinfected daily with formaldehyde; Alscher, Jahresberichte (1906), 32. Despite these severe measures, the school was not spared from epidemics. It had to close down for some weeks, due to a typhus outbreak in Teschen; Alscher, Jahresberichte (1905), 42. 18  Hans Januschke, Jahresberichte der k.k. Staats-Oberrealschule (Cieszyn: K. und K. Hofbuchdruckerei Karl Prochaska, 1901), 4. 19  Ibid., 10.

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with Polish as the medium of teaching was founded in 1895, gaining full rights of examination in 1903. Its number of students grew quickly, from ninety-five in the first year to over three hundred in 1900. The establishment of more nationally oriented secondary schools slowly reduced the heterogeneous makeup of classes in the town’s secondary schools. For instance, the German Albrecht-Gymnasium lost around half of its students (150) to the new Polish school in 1903.20 The K. K. Staats-Oberrealschule mostly withstood this trend of nationalization. Due to its focus on the natural sciences, the school was “protected” from strong nationalization and separation. Therefore, it is interesting to examine it as an example of a “different,” non-nationalist development in Habsburg educational institutions. 3

Austrian Silesia as an Imperial Periphery

Situated in Teschen, the capital of the eastern part of the province of Austrian Silesia, the history of the K. K. Staats-Oberrealschule reveals differences that are due to its peripheral location. This part of the empire can be viewed as periphery for three reasons: (1) geographical distance to the political center and location next to the border, (2) heterogeneity of population (including in terms of religion), and (3) economic asymmetry and dependence on the center.21 Austrian Silesia was the smallest of the three parts of the Bohemian Crown and located at the northeast of the empire, bordering Prussia (since 1871 the German Empire) in the north. It was formed after the end of the First Silesian War (1740–1742), in which King Frederick the Great conquered most of the Austrian province of Silesia. In the Treaty of Breslau (June 1742), the province was divided and Austria kept only a small part: the duchies of Troppau, Neisse, Jägerndorf, Freudental, and Teschen. Austria’s remaining part of the province was split into two parts, divided by a small strip of territory that was part of Moravia. Therefore, the Duchy of Teschen was geographically separated from the other parts of Austrian Silesia and referred to as Teschen Silesia.22 The topography of the region is dominated by the Beskid Mountains, a Carpathian low mountain range that stretches from Bohemia in the west along 20  Despite its enormous loss of students, the Albrecht-Gymnasium also remained a mostly nationally diverse school until the second half of the Great War. Bogus, “Szkoły i szkolnictwo,” 160–5. 21  Hárs et al., “Zentren peripher,” 4–8. 22  Robert Luft, “Das Teschener Schlesien als Geschichtslandschaft,” in Teschen. Eine geteilte Stadt im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Ludger Udolph and Christian Prunitsch (Dresden: Thelem, 2009), 24–30.

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today’s Slovakia (historical Upper Hungary) up to Ukraine in the east. For centuries, the Jablunkov Pass (northeast of Teschen) linked Slovakia to Silesia and Bohemia. This passageway was important for trade and migration. In the nineteenth century a railway was constructed along this route that intensified migration, and the cultural and linguistic connections between these regions became stronger. Artisans, traders, and workers from northern Hungary (mostly Slovaks) migrated to the industrial centers in eastern Bohemia.23 After the First World War and the establishment of Czechoslovakia, the migration of Slovak native speakers into the region rose, strengthening the position of the non-Polish-speaking Slavic population.24 In the late eighteenth century, the Prussian government sent a large number of German-speaking settlers into its part of Silesia and restricted the use of the Slavic languages. In Austrian Silesia, language politics were more liberal, although since the reign of Joseph II (1765–1790), German had become the dominant language in the administration. Consequently, many officials from the German-speaking parts of the empire moved to Silesia as clerks and administrators.25 In 1910 the entire province was inhabited by a population of around 750,000 people. The three main spoken languages were German (43 percent), Polish (31 percent), and Czech (26 percent).26 It is important to note that most residents spoke more than one language. Also, many forms of the regional “Silesian” or “Goralish” dialects were widely used in everyday life.27 The local dialects, which are important to the regions’ history, will not be examined in detail in this study, because they are not mentioned in the sources regarding the school. There was also religious heterogeneity, with the prevalent confessions being Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the coal mining industry around the city of Ostrau (Ostrawa/Ostrava) dominated the region’s economy. The first ironworks were built in 1821. Thereafter, industrialization changed the face of the region. The construction of factories and railways required a large migration of laborers from Poland and Northern Hungary. Germans mostly worked as administrators and engineers.28

23  Kevin Hannan, Borders of Language and Identity in Teschen Silesia (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), 13. 24  Ibid., 163. 25  Ibid., 38. 26  Anson Rabinach, “The Migration of Galician Jews to Vienna,” Austrian History Yearbook 11 (1975): 45. 27  Luft, “Das Teschener Schlesien,” 36. 28  Hannan, Borders of Language, 39.

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Around 1900 Teschen was inhabited by 19,176 people, of whom 54 percent were Germans, 31 percent Poles, 5.5 percent Czechs, and 8.7 percent Jews (who mostly spoke German).29 The Germans were dominant in the administration, economy, and politics of Teschen. Despite their relatively small number, Jews played an important role in the cultural life and the economy. The town was also a center for the development of the Polish language and education in Silesia: in 1851 the first weekly Polish-language newspaper in the region, Gwiazdka Cieszyńska (Cieszyn starlet), was launched by Paweł Stalmach. In 1901 the Dom Narodowy (house of the national culture) was established with rooms for Polish associations and a library, and soon became a center for the Polish national movement. These Polish institutions were largely inspired by German ones, like the Deutsches Haus, a cultural and political center for the German-speaking population, founded in 1898. In contrast, the Czech minority never played a large role in the culture and politics of Teschen.30 After the end of the First World War, the formerly peaceful province turned into a hotspot of national tensions as the emerging, self-proclaimed nation-states of Poland and Czechoslovakia started to fight for control over the territory. Especially the Trans-Olza Land,31 with its large Polish-speaking population, became an object of dispute between Poles and Czechs. In January 1919, a brief war for Zaolsia culminated in the battle of Skotschau (Skoczów/ Skočov) on 23 January 1919. The allied forces of the Entente finally intervened and stopped the fighting on 30 January. As a result of the Spa Conference, the province was divided between the two new states, with Poland keeping only the territory on the east side of the Olza River. After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, Polish forces invaded Zaolsia and annexed it for a short period. In September 1939, the Germans quickly defeated Poland and dissolved the Polish state. After the Second World War, when Poland and Czechoslovakia were restored, the Olza River was finally acknowledged as border.32 Towards the end of the nineteenth century, large-scale modernization took place in the region, which improved the connections of the province to the rest of the empire: from 1869 until 1888, it was linked to the empire’s railroad system, and a train station was constructed. In 1908, a new bridge over the Olza River was built and named after Emperor Francis Joseph. Despite the presence of some smaller factories (a furniture factory and a brewery), the economy 29  Alicja Wiatr, “Schlesien: Český Tĕšin und Cieszyn,” in Stadt—Grenze—Fluss. Europäische Doppelstädte (Berlin: BWV, 2005), 72. 30  Ibid. 31  The term “Zaolzie” was mostly used by the Polish government since the 1920’s to describe the territories lost to Czechoslovakia. 32  Wiatr, “Schlesien: Český Tĕšin und Cieszyn,” 75.

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of Teschen was not based on industry like neighboring Ostrau or Karwin (Karwina/Karviná, in Moravia). It was dominated instead by trade and administration. Outside of its capital, the Duchy of Teschen was mostly dependent on agriculture.33 The city of Teschen was the center of administration and education. From 1848, the imperial government had gradually abolished elementary schools controlled by the church and expanded education at every level. In 1874, around 93 percent of all children in the town and its surroundings attended elementary schools (1417 pupils in total). Therefore, the town needed new buildings and more teachers—by 1888 there were three communal elementary schools in Teschen. The churches still owned some smaller schools: the Evangelical church maintained an elementary school with 202 students in 1880, and Catholic nuns of the Sisters of Mercy of St. Borromeo ran an elementary school for girls with 173 pupils in the same year. A similar Jewish confessional elementary school existed only briefly—it was founded in 1859, but dissolved in 1876. In every school, students were taught in German. Secondary school education was also vastly expanded in the nineteenth century. After 1848, the Catholic Gymnasium was gradually transformed into a state school and after 1856, most teaching clerics were replaced by professional teachers. The second middle school in Teschen was the Evangelical Gymnasium, which was also transformed into a secular school in 1869 and became the second state Gymnasium. Both schools were united in 1873, forming the state Gymnasium with an average of around three hundred students over the next twenty-five years (20 percent of whom came directly from the town, with 80 percent from its surroundings). The main objective of secularizing confessional secondary educational institutions was mostly achieved in the second half of the nineteenth century. The medium of teaching was German and Latin, but it was possible to learn the regional languages of Polish and Czech as optional subjects. An important part of the schools’ educational program was to teach humanistic subjects and encourage loyalty to the Habsburg Empire (in 1899 it changed its name to K. K. Albrecht-Gymnasium, after Archduke Albrecht von Österreich-Teschen). 4

The Period of Nationalization: 1900–1914

In the late nineteenth century, students at the K. K. Ober-Realschule started to organize clandestine nationalist groups, like the Towarzystwo Narodowe 33  Ibid., 71.

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(national society), that tried to spread Polish “national consciousness,” which was a visible sign of the rise of nationalist ideas in the region.34 A few years later, some Polish students started to depart from the school after 1903, with numbers leveling out a few years later. Aside from these changes in attendance, the school’s structure stayed mostly steady until the First World War. In 1900, the K. K. Ober-Realschule had 402 students and was the largest secondary school in Teschen. Only sixty-seven students were born within the town, as most came from outside: 251 from Austrian Silesia, seventy-one from other Austrian provinces,35 eight from Hungary (most likely Upper Hungary, today’s Slovakia), and the rest from the German Empire or Russia. Two hundred thirty-eight students spoke German as their native language, but Polish was also widespread, with 128 native speakers—only thirty-three students were of “Czechoslavic”36 origin.37 The establishment of the Polish secondary school also had an impact on the Ober-Realschule: it did not loose as many students as the Albrecht-Gymnasium, but the number of Polish native speakers declined visibly during the following years: from 136 in 1904/0538 and 106 in 1906/07,39 to eighty-two in 1907/08.40 But unlike in the Albrecht-Gymnasium, many Polish native speakers remained until 1920. The number of about seventy to eighty students with Polish origins stayed stable until the last two years of the school’s existence.41 Despite being discretionary subjects, the language courses of Polish and Czech were very well attended. In the year 1900, 121 students learned Polish and all 151 studied Czech.42 It is remarkable that the structure of classes of the two languages was very different: almost every student who learned Czech attended the first-level course in the first year at school (104 of 151 students). In contrast, the Polish language courses were more scattered among the different language levels (47 students in the first level, 21 in the second, 16 in the third,

34  Bogus, “Szkoły i szkolnictwo,” 158. 35  These students usually came from Moravia or Galicia. Januschke, Jahresberichte (1901), 27–29. 36  Januschke did not specify the difference between the term he used for the native tongue (“Czechoslavic”) and the language of instruction (which he called “Bohemian”). 37  Januschke, Jahresberichte (1901), 18. 38  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1905), 48. 39  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1907), 48. 40  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1908), 54. 41  Robert Walleczek, Jahresberichte der Staatsrealschule in Teschen (Cieszyn, 1920), 9. 42  Teacher of “Bohemian” was Prof. Johann Králík, who also taught French and was the school librarian. Polish was taught by Georg Heczko who did not teach any other subjects at the school. Januschke, Jahresberichte (1901), 13.

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and 17 in the fifth and sixth).43 This difference was most likely due to the higher number of Polish native speakers, who did not need to learn the language from the beginning. It also appears that Czech started to become very popular at the time, possibly because of the large industry around Ostrau, which offered the prospect of future job opportunities. The number of students in the optional subjects started to decline slowly after 1903. In the 1905/06 school year, Polish was attended by ninety-three students and “Bohemian” (as the Czech language was called in the reports) by eighty students. Again, it was more popular at the beginner’s level, although the language courses were more scattered than five years before.44 In 1910/11, Polish language courses were attended by seventy-six students and Bohemian by fifty-seven.45 Unfortunately, it is not possible to determine the nationality background of the students in the language courses. But the number of Polish native speakers and the number taking the Polish courses similarly declined. It is therefore logical to presume that most students learning the language came from Polish-speaking families. Of course, it is necessary to consider that many of these families used regional dialects. In many ways, these dialects could be very different from the standard language, perhaps motivating “native speakers” to take language classes at the school. The knowledge of the Czech language was promoted by the school principal and administration. When Professor Johann Králik retired in 1910, the school leadership praised his lessons as very “insightful,” because he had realized the “necessity” for the students to know this “regional language.”46 The confessions of the students in 1900 are listed as Roman Catholic (255 students), Protestant (92), and Jewish47 (55).48 The religion classes were held for each confession separately: the Roman-Catholic faith taught by Viktor Eisenberg, the Evangelic Protestant (Augsburg Confession) faith by Richard Fritsche, and the Jewish faith by Dr. Adolf Leimdörfer.49 There were three different worship services to celebrate the opening of the school year (Catholics on 18 September, Jews on 21 September, and Protestants on 22 September) and

43  There are no numbers for the fourth level. Januschke, Jahresberichte (1901), 20. 44  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1906), 37. 45  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1911), 46. 46  Ibid., 36. 47  The religion of the students was mentioned as “Israelitisch” and the religious lessons for the Jewish students at the school were called “Mosaisch.” 48  Januschke, Jahresberichte (1901), 18. 49  He was also Rabbi (Kreisrabbiner) in Teschen (ibid., 16–17).

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two different worship services to mark its end (13 and 15 July for Protestants and Catholics, respectively).50 However, the social structure of the school in this time was not as diverse as its ethnic or religious makeup. Most students came from middle- or upperclass families; the occupations of the fathers are listed as public officers (Beamte, 171), traders (Handel- und Gewerbetreibende, 154), wealthy farm owners (Oekonomen, 40), and individual gentleman (Private, 33).51 Almost every graduate chose a career in natural sciences, often connected to the coal mining industry. From the thirty-eight candidates who completed their Matura, exit examinations in 1900/01, twenty-three went on to study at a technical university or chose a job as technician, while ten others went on to the mining academy (Bergakademie).52 The most important celebrations at the school were linked to the monarchy. They connected the students to the Austrian Empire and bound all the subjects to the crown, furthering loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty. Since the crisis of the monarchy in 1848, these kinds of festivities were introduced to strengthen the bond between the emperor and “his people.” Previously, birthdays or name days were a strictly private matter of the Habsburg family. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, however, the monarchy imitated bourgeois festivities, which included large crowds and modern forms of organization. The mass mobilization of every nationality of the empire represented therein symbolized its cohesion.53 The importance of festivities is also evident in the case of the OberRealschule: on 18 August, the emperor’s birthday was celebrated, while his name day was on October 4. On 19 November there was also a divine service in memory of Empress Elisabeth54 to engender loyalty to empire. At the town’s general religious services, teachers took part as representatives of the students, but the school also held its own service.55 The events connected to the monarchy were the only ones in which every student took part. In contrast, the religious services were held in different places of the town.56 50  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1902), 34. 51  Januschke, Jahresberichte (1901), 19. 52  Ibid., 27–29. 53  Ute Schneider researched the connection between politics and public celebrations, especially in forming loyalties: see Ute Schneider, Politische Festkultur im 19. Jahrhundert. Die Rheinprovinz von der französischen Zeit bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges (1806–1918) (Essen: Klartext, 1995), 5–21. 54   Empress Elisabeth was assassinated in Geneva on 10 September 1898; Januschke, Jahresberichte (1901), 28. 55  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1904), 28. 56  Januschke, Jahresberichte (1901), 35.

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In 1906, the whole school gathered for an important event: Emperor Francis Joseph visited Teschen to supervise the military maneuvers of the Imperial Army. He stayed at the palace of Archduke Frederick. At his arrival and departure, the students of the Ober-Realschule formed a guard of honor and “had the luck to look upon the sublime face of their beloved ruler.”57 Also, Principal Rudolf Alscher personally spoke to the Emperor, who “asked about the prosperity of the institution.”58 However, Francis Joseph’s visit to the military in the borderland was more connected to publicity than strategic necessity. In December 1908, the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of Francis Joseph’s ascension to the throne became a huge event at the school. After the religious service, the students gathered at the “festively decorated school gymnasium.”59 The school choir sang patriotic songs about Austria and its Emperor. Some students of the sixth and seventh grade read poems about the glory of the “home country Austria.”60 On 12 April 1912, there was also a large celebration of the anniversary of the Pragmatic Sanction. Again the school choir sang patriotic songs and Prof. Dr. Leopold Seltenhammer gave an “impressive speech” about the school’s loyalty to the empire.61 The display of loyalty was also present in the school’s examination topics: In the German-language classes, these were often connected to the Habsburg monarchy, especially at the beginning of the century. In 1901, one topic (of five) of the final semester was, “Why the Austrian loves his Emperor,” and the other (the topic of the school graduation, the so-called Matura exam) was, “What are the consequences of [Teschen’s] geographical position for Austria?”62 One year later, the final exam was about a patriotic imperial topic: “In which wars did Austria prove to be the keeper of European civilization?”63 But such political topics were an exception at this time, as most exams had more general literary topics, focusing on the works of Schiller, Goethe, Lessing, or Shakespeare. After 1903, the “patriotic” topics also seemed to decline in frequency, but started to reappear again around 1910.64 The international crises that consumed Europe after 1908 probably increased the necessity for Habsburg patriotism. 57  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1907), 42. 58  Ibid. 59  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1909), 47. 60  Ibid. 61  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1913), 40. 62  Januschke, Jahresberichte (1901), 17. 63  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1902), 28. 64  The Matura topics from 1903 until 1910 were more general, such as one on “The city as the highlight of human culture,” or “Nature as an inspiration for literature.” Alscher, Jahresberichte (1907), 53; (1905), 53.

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The First World War

The war dramatically influenced the K. K. Ober-Realschule. Political conflicts between the European powers at the beginning of the twentieth century stoked the fear of war all over the continent. The Bosnian Crisis (1908–09) and the Balkan Wars (1912–13) intensified the war scare and the militarization of societies. This was also noticeable in the provinces and especially in the borderlands of the empire. Starting in the school year 1910/11, military training was introduced at the K. K. Ober-Realschule for the two final grades.65 Twenty-two students took part in the training, which consisted of two parts: training with military rifles, and the demonstration of modern machine guns. The students learned how to use the rifles at a shooting range and observed modern military technology—the “effects of a heavy machine gun fire on different objects.”66 Starting that year, similar training took place on an annual basis. In 1911/12, this training was even extended from October 1911 until March 1912. Students of the two highest grades were instructed in the use of a military rifle every Saturday evening. At the end of the school year, a competition for the best marksman was introduced, taking place on 3 July.67 In the same year, the Imperial Army introduced “military youth games” (Militärische Jugendspiele) for the students. This event was an addition to the usual youth games, which were hosted by imperial officers and took place every year in October.68 The introduction of military training can be viewed not only as a means of providing future soldiers, but also as way of enhancing loyalty to the empire, especially since patriotic topics related to the Habsburgs started to appear on the exams at the same time. As far as the school chronicles show, this situation did not cause any conflicts between the different nationalities attending the school. The war had a deep impact on the school’s structure, as many teachers and students (of the higher grades and alumni) were enlisted.69 Instead of the usual introductory essay (mostly about technical or humanistic topics), the school’s

65  Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach, Oddział w Cieszynie, 70 Direktion der K.u.K. StaatsRealschule zu Teschen, 15 / 16 (Gestionsprotokolle), 523. 66  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1911), 42. 67  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1912), 42. 68  Except in 1913. In this year the military part of the games had to be cancelled, due to the “political turmoil” (the Balkan Wars) that led to parts of the Austrian military being mobilized. The rifle training continued as usual. Alscher, Jahresberichte (1913), 44. 69  Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach, Oddział w Cieszynie, 70 Direktion der K.u.K. StaatsRealschule zu Teschen, 15 / 16 (Gestionsprotokolle), 417–421.

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yearbook of 1914/15 began with a list of teachers, students, and staff members participating in the war. It described their military rank, function, and place of service. Most of them served as technicians or officers. In cases of injury, death, or capture, specific battles are mentioned. According to these references, most members of the school fought at the Russian border (at Przemysl, Tarnow, etc.) not far away from their homeland.70 Due to the war, some classes were limited or cancelled, as many younger teachers were enlisted. Additionally, some classrooms and the school’s gymnasium were used to shelter soldiers. Therefore, no sports lessons took place in the first two school years of the war.71 At the outbreak of the war in August 1914, all the students were assembled and the older students encouraged to join the army. The younger students were to take part in different forms of civil service: helping the local farmers with fieldwork, checking the plumbing of the waterworks system in order to conserve water, or aiding in the transportation of wounded soldiers. They were also encouraged to support the Red Cross and volunteer in hospitals. Due to the quartering of soldiers, the annual opening celebration of the school could not take place in September. It was shifted to one month later, when the school gained some provisional classrooms at the palace of the Archduke. Regular lessons started again on 19 October in a “very limited” scale. On 20 October, the soldiers left the classrooms (but stayed in the gymnasium) and after a “thorough cleaning,” most of them could be used again. Starting 9 November, lessons could be continued normally, but some students of the AlbrechtGymnasium joined the classes, because their school continued to be used to shelter soldiers.72 The topics of the German exams were now very heavily influenced by the war. The higher grades in particular had to write about military or patriotic topics such as “the heavy warships” or a “farewell address to my fellow comrades,” and so forth. Eighteen students attended the special exit examinations, the “War Matura,”73 because they joined the military.74 The celebrations of the Habsburgs were strengthened at the beginning of the war. Despite the problem of finding enough space to host such events, all the celebrations of the emperor’s name day and birthday took place regularly, and in fact even more of them were organized: on 11 May 1915, two hundred students of the Ober-Realschule participated in a torchlight procession to the palace to honor 70  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1915), 3–15. 71  Ibid., 17–19. 72  Ibid., 30–32. 73  It made it possible for mobilized students to graduate faster. 74  Ibid., 28.

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Archduke Friedrich. He was a field marshal and commander of the Imperial Army, but lost his position after the death of Emperor Francis Joseph and was dismissed in February 1917. On 21 May 1915, the school’s director and teachers requested that the school be renamed after the archduke—a request that was accepted by the local administration. The school changed its name to Erzherzog Friedrich-Realschule in July 1915.75 Shortly after the war the name was dropped and the school was called Staats-Realschule. The most significant change to the school’s curriculum was the short-term disappearance and later advancement of the regional languages, “Bohemian” (Czech) and Polish. Probably because of the lack of classrooms, the optional lessons of Polish and Czech were at first cancelled for the school year 1914/15. The two teachers (Heczko for Polish, Pawlik for Czech) were temporarily suspended.76 In February 1915, a drastic turn took place: the knowledge of these two languages was made obligatory for every student of the Ober-Realschule by the imperial school ministry. The lessons were continued the following school years and maintained their compulsory status.77 On 29 September 1915, Polish and Czech finally became regular subjects.78 Heczko and Pawlik returned to the school’s staff, this time as regular teachers.79 These changes were part of a new imperial political orientation towards the Bohemian crownlands. The imperial administration wanted to give the speakers of local languages greater liberties in order to ensure different national groups’ loyalty to the crown. It was an act of “carrot and stick” politics, as simultaneously the military strengthened its influence over the local administration, and many locals were drafted.80 During the war, fifty-five students of the Ober-Realschule died on the battlefield, and even more were injured, captured, or went missing. Fortyfour of them fell in the first two years of battles against Russia.81 From 1916

75  Leopold Seltenhammer, Jahresberichte der Erzherzog Friedrich Realschule (Cieszyn: K. und K. Hofbuchdruckerei Karl Prochaska, 1916) 28. 76  Alscher, Jahresberichte (1915), 17. 77  Ibid., 32. 78  The Albrecht-Gymnasium, for example, also changed the curriculum but only Polish became an obligatory subject. Czech was not taught at all. Pragenau, Programm (1918), 7. 79  Seltenhammer, Jahresberichte (1916), 28. 80  Manfred Rauchensteiner, Der Erste Weltkrieg und das Ende der Habsburger-Monarchie (Vienna: Böhlau, 2013), 445–7. 81  On April 26, 1915 the school’s principal Rudolf Alscher died out of natural causes, and Leopold Seltenhammer took his place as “provisional principal” (Seltenhammer, Jahresberichte (1916), 29). On September 30, 1916, Robert Walleczek, a French teacher from Vienna, was appointed as the new principal of the school, a post at which he stayed until

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to 1918, most of the student and alumni soldiers fought at the Italian front.82 Nevertheless, the overall number of students at the school stayed steady: in the school year 1917/18, 420 students attended the school. The profile of ethnic and religious backgrounds also remained approximately the same (339 German, 62 Polish, and 21 “Czechoslavic” native speakers).83 In 1917, some normality reappeared to the school: the students of the Albrecht-Gymnasium returned to their own building in January 1917, and even the sports lessons began again in February 1917.84 The celebrations of the Habsburgs continued. Of course, the death of Francis Joseph on 21 November was an enormous event. The school’s chronicle described it as an “event of world historical meaning,” and all the students of the Ober-Realschule attended the religious service for the emperor.85 In the opening text, Francis Joseph was called “father” of the many nations of his empire. Despite the alliance between the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary, it also mentioned the battle against “the Turks” as the most important “monument” of Habsburg history (which of course took place long before the reign of Francis Joseph).86 The importance of Habsburg celebrations at the school continued with Karl I, who succeeded his uncle as Emperor. His appeal, “To my peoples” (An meine Völker),87 was reprinted in the school chronicle. In this text, he emphasized the monarchy as the connecting element for all the nationalities of the empire.88 Despite the difficulty of finding an appropriate space, even more celebrations of the Habsburgs were organized: the name day89 and birthday (17 August) of the new emperor and empress, and the birthday anniversary of Francis Joseph. On 19 November 1917, the name day anniversary of Empress Elisabeth was celebrated for the last time,90 but new occasions emerged: on 18 November 1917, a religious service took place to “celebrate the rescue of the

1922 (Walleczek, Jahresberichte, 1917, 25). For the figures on student casualties, see Alscher, Jahresberichte, 1915, 3–15; Seltenhammer, Jahresberichte, 1916, 3–15. 82  Walleczeck, Jahresberichte (1917), 3–15; (1918), 3–15. 83  Walleczek, Jahresberichte (1918), 23. 84  Walleczeck, Jahresberichte (1917), 26. 85  Ibid., 25. 86  Ibid., 4. 87  This was the only text published in the school chronicle that was not written by the principal or the board. 88  Walleczeck, Jahresberichte (1917), 5. 89  This day was celebrated only by the Catholic students. 90  Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach, Oddział w Cieszynie, 70 Direktion der K.u.K. StaatsRealschule zu Teschen, 15 / 16 (Gestionsprotokolle), 614.

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emperor from mortal danger” as he nearly drowned by accident during a front visit at the Isonzo River. The birth of the imperial prince was also celebrated grandly on 10 March 1917.91 At the two highest grade levels, patriotic or war-related subjects became the most important examination topics (though prompts on Schiller, Grillparzer, and other authors could still be chosen). Also for the first time, the “region” of Austrian Silesia became a possible examination topic for the Matura, as questions addressing “the meaning of our Silesian homeland for the stability of Austria in war and peace,” or “the possibility to earn a living in our homeland of Eastern Silesia,” appeared.92 Interestingly, the description of the region changed during this year, and the term “Eastern Silesia” was used for the first time in the school’s chronicle. This redefinition was connected to the empire’s new policy of offering the regions more autonomy in order to strengthen loyalty to the crown during the war. In combination with the upgrading of the “regional languages,” this shows how the “region” in general became an issue of importance. At the same time, loyalty to the Habsburgs was furthered by the school’s curriculum and celebrations. 6

Aftermath of the War: 1918–1922

The Habsburg Empire, hugely celebrated during its last years, seemed to have vanished without a trace. In the school year 1918/19, the school’s name was changed to Staats-Realschule. It is not mentioned in the chronicle how and when this transformation took place. The chronicle also makes no mention of the end of the war, or of the monarchy. It was a period of uncertainty, between the disappearance of the old empire and the construction of the new Polish national state. On 19 December 1918, the school’s directorate was brought under the control of the Polish administration.93 The principal and most of the teachers kept their jobs. The school’s yearbook mentions seven teachers who were dismissed by the new administration. They were mostly younger or provisional teachers hired at the end of the war. They were recalled or transferred to other schools. Also, eight new teachers were installed by the Polish administration to replace 91  Walleczek, Jahresberichte (1918), 16–17. 92  Walleczek, Jahresberichte (1917), 39; (1918), 28. 93  The administration was named Komisya Szkolna Ksiestwa Cieszynskiego [School committee of the Duchy of Cieszyn]. Walleczek, Jahresberichte (1919), 11. After 1918, the yearbook became titled the Jahresberichte der Staats-Realschule in Teschen.

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the ones who died in the war or were still in captivity.94 There is no evidence that the teachers were dismissed for political reasons. The younger teachers (even the Polish teacher Haczko) probably lost their jobs because of the difficult financial situation. While most of the Polish native speakers left the former Albrecht-Gymnasium during the war,95 the number at the Staats-Realschule remained stable, even four years after the end of the empire. In the school year 1919/20, sixty-nine students attended from Polish-speaking families. Nevertheless, the number of “Czechoslavic” students declined drastically: only eight students from Czech families remained. Despite the grave conflict with Poland, twenty-six students of the school still came from Czechoslovakia, from Polish- or German-speaking families across the border.96 However, the military conflict between the two states brought a rapid end to the Czech minority at the school. The language (now called “Czech” instead of “Bohemian”) was taught until 1920, but only a few native speakers were left at the school.97 The new borders immediately changed the school’s politics towards the other parts of (former) Austrian Silesia. From September 1920, it became difficult for parents from the now Czechoslovakian parts of Silesia to register their children at the Realschule. The Polish school commission ordered that only a limited number of “foreign” students could be accepted to the school. It demanded that the “students from one’s own state” should always be preferred. No additional rooms, teachers, or classes were to be provided because of “foreign” (meaning mostly Czechoslovakian) citizens.98 After these changes, the total number of students declined drastically: from 429 in the school year 1919/20 to only 262 in 1920/21.99 The decline continued in the final year of 1921/22, with only 184 students.100 This drop in student number continued despite that fact that on 27 September 1920 the classes of the former AlbrechtGymnasium (since 1919 the Staatsgymnasium) were moved to the building of the Realschule, with both schools sharing a building from that point on.

94  Their names suggest that they were probably of regional origin. Walleczek, Jahresberichte (1919), 2. 95  In the school year 1917/18, only twenty-one Polish and five Czech native speakers were left at the former Albrecht-Gymnasium. Pragenau, Programm (1918), 21. 96  Walleczek, Jahresberichte (1919), 9. 97  Walleczek, Jahresberichte (1921), 9. 98  Ibid., 5. 99  Ibid., 8. 100  Moritz Landwehr von Pragenau, Jahresberichte der Staats-Realschule in Teschen (Cieszyn, 1922), 9.

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Interestingly, the social backgrounds of the students were also starting to change a little. Most of them still came from families of the industrial or administrative middle class, but the number of those with fathers who were artisans, farmers, industrial workers, and so on grew: in the school year 1921/22, about 10 percent of the students came from low-income families.101 Even though it was still a school primarily attended by students from higher social positions, the school seemed to open up to other social classes for the first time in its history. The second large change was the admission of girls. Female students are first mentioned in the school year 1920/21, but it was still not possible for them to attend the classes as regular students, only as “guests.” They were called “Hospitierende Privatistinen”102 The financial situation of the school and the students also changed dramatically. Due to high inflation in 1921/22, the grants for gifted students could no longer be paid and were replaced by noncash benefits, such as food and clothing.103 The celebrations at the school disappeared almost completely after the end of the Habsburg Empire. The anniversaries connected to the monarchy of course disappeared, but at first nothing new came in their place. From autumn 1918 to 1920, only the beginning and the end of the school year was celebrated by the whole school. The Polish national holiday on 3 May 1919 was just a Ferialtag—a day free of school, without any official celebration.104 This changed one year later, when the new school administration established many new anniversaries connected to the Polish state. The school’s chronicle indicates clearly that the new anniversaries and celebrations came about through decrees from the Polish school commission. On 19 March, Catholic students celebrated a “military divine service” on the name day of the “head of state” which meant St. Joseph’s day due to the “First Marshall of Poland,” Józef Piłsudski.105 The whole school celebrated the new Polish constitution on 31 March and the Polish national holiday on 3 May. Additionally, all three confessions celebrated these “patriotic” events separately with religious services.106 After a short period of uncertainty, the new Polish administration began to organize festivities similar to the traditions of the former empire, such as the name day of the head of state. Additionally, new “republican” celebrations, like the Anniversary of the Constitution, were introduced. 101  Ibid., 9. 102  Walleczek, Jahresberichte (1921), 8. 103  Pragenau, Jahresberichte (1922), 15. 104  Walleczek, Jahresberichte (1920), 6. 105  Walleczek, Jahresberichte (1921), 6. 106  Ibid., 7.

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Neither the end of the war nor the disappearance of the monarchy were prominently mentioned in the school’s chronicle. The only trace of these world events found in the chronicle is the end of military training: in October 1918 the training started as usual, but was cancelled after the end of the war in November due to the “big cataclysm which caused the collapse of the monarchy.” Thereafter, further military training was considered as “without foundation” because of the “total change of the situation.”107 This is the only time the yearbook mentions the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Of course, the patriotic Habsburg topics of the Matura examinations also disappeared. After the school year 1918/19, general literary or regional topics dominated the exams, “the industrial basis of Eastern Silesia” being one example.108 Nevertheless, the empire was still present in the school’s curriculum: the schoolbooks and teaching content in history and geography did not change until the final year of the school’s existence. The chronicle mentions that “due to the changed political circumstances the lessons concerning the fatherland are changed to Poland instead of Austria-Hungary.”109 Thus, it took four years after the war’s end to completely abolish the empire’s history from the school curriculum. 7 Conclusion Even though this case study cannot claim to encompass the entirety of school politics in Austrian Silesia, highlighting the changes from 1900 until 1922 at the K. K. Staats-Realschule reveals considerable information about education in a “peripheral” region, far away from “nationalist” centers of the empire. Despite the relative proximity of Ostrava or Cracow, the region was “belated” in terms of nationalist ideas for a long time. First of all, the school’s structure stayed remarkably stable. Most of the staff did not change over the period and the number of Polish and Czech native speakers stayed mostly the same. Even with the establishment of a school with Polish as language of instruction in 1903, native Polish speakers still attended the Realschule. The war and the turmoil after 1918 did not alter the popularity of the school for Polish or Czech native speakers, either. The focus on natural sciences made the school attractive for bourgeois families of different nationalities. Even during Poland’s war against Czechoslovakia and the sealing of 107  Walleczek, Jahresberichte (1919), 13. 108  Ibid., 15. 109  Pragenau, Jahresberichte (1922), 3.

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the borders, parents from Zaolsia tried to register their children at the school. Nationalization had to be enforced with administrative measures. Of course, the school was not a paradise of heterogeneity: the religious groups were clearly separated, and even the opening of the school year was not celebrated collectively. The social structure of the school also remained highly rigid until the last two years of its existence. Only the festivities focusing on the imperial monarchy were attended by the whole school. Military training was also obligatory for every student. The cohesion of the empire was linked to the harmony of the different nationalities, with the emperor as a unifying symbol—and this ideal was alive in the school too. The strengthening of the “region” during the final years of the empire is also notable: the “regional” languages Czech and Polish were elevated during the first years of the war. The examination topics in the German lessons can also be seen as a mirror of this political trend: they developed from “patriotic” topics about loyalty to the empire, to more “regional” themes during the war and its aftermath (with strong connections to the Habsburgs). After 1918, even though the empire vanished, the idea of it was not entirely gone: most of the history and the German books still remained centered around the empire. The topics of new nationalism had to be established from outside by the new Polish school administration. Finally, the military struggles and the new border with Czechoslovakia eliminated the tradition of Czech language and students at the school. For the new national states of Poland and Czechoslovakia, the former region of Austrian Silesia became a “problematic periphery” with an undeveloped “national consciousness.”110 Schools were used to enforce a single national language and loyalty in the new states. Nationalists in both countries tried to “cleanse” them of the imperial relic of national indifference, which they proclaimed to be “backward”—a perception that remains common until today, even among historians.111 The case of the K. K. Staats-Oberrealschule shows that it is necessary for scholars to take a closer look at the periphery. It demonstrates that the rise of nationalism in education was not a natural development, as it has been called by historians until today. Especially in peripheral regions of Eastern Europe, empires left deep footprints. In this study, it is the educational tradition of the Habsburgs that is shown to have survived in certain ways under the surface of the new nation state.

110  Luft, “Das Teschener Schlesien,” 19. 111  Ibid., 36.

Chapter 11

Reconstructing Multilingualism in Everyday Life: The Case of Late Habsburg Lviv Jan Fellerer 1 Introduction This chapter1 addresses the question of multilingualism in the everyday life of the late Habsburg Monarchy, with focus on Lviv (Lemberg, Lwów, L’viv),2 the capital of the crownland “Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.” The city’s officials, residents, and visitors from surrounding areas spoke varieties of Polish, Ukrainian, Yiddish, and, to a lesser extent, German and other minority languages. These multilingual encounters were subject to the ever more arduous politics of nationalism of the late Habsburg Monarchy. Crucially, the semiautonomous status gained by Galicia following the “Polish-Austrian Compromise” after 1867 produced a shift from German to Polish as the prime language of the province and its capital.3 This attempt by the imperial government in Vienna to appease Galicia’s traditional Polish elites triggered an increasingly well-organized political backlash from nationally aware Ukrainian4 circles. Meanwhile, contemporary Jewish politics were moving away from a fading assimilationist trend of adopting Polish culture towards the conflicting 1  The archival research for this chapter was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom, as part of the project “Sub-Cultures as Integrative Forces in East-Central Europe: 1900–present,” 2016, http://subcultures.mml.ox.ac.uk/ (accessed 11 November 2018). 2  To avoid any unintended political connotations, the version of the city’s name (and its inhabitants) adopted in this chapter is the contemporary international English form “Lviv” (and “Lvivians”), rather than “Lemberg” and “Lwów,” the German and Polish equivalents prevalent until the First and Second World War, and also unlike “L’viv,” the city’s modern Ukrainian name. Names of other towns and villages in eastern Galicia will be quoted in Polish, with the first mention accompanied by the Ukrainian version in brackets. Lviv street names will be quoted in their Polish form of the time only. 3  See, e.g., Christoph Marschall von Bieberstein, Freiheit in der Unfreiheit: Die nationale Autonomie der Polen nach dem österreichisch-ungarischen Ausgleich 1867: Ein konservativer Aufbruch im mitteleuropäischen Vergleich (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993). 4  The Austrian authorities referred to the Ukrainians and the Ukrainian language of Galicia as “Ruthenian”, partly in a bid to dissociate them from the Ukrainians of the Russian Empire.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004407978_012

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emancipatory movements of Zionism and socialism.5 The general political climate widened fault lines along national and ethnic divides. They became manifest in the special institutions, public spaces, and channels of communication that emerged to cater separately to the city’s main ethnolinguistic constituencies. For instance, there were separate Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish political parties, educational associations, sports clubs, newspapers, and journals.6 This provided the city’s Ukrainian and Yiddish speakers in particular with spheres for exclusive use of their language in the face of an otherwise Polish-dominated public urban life. Thus, the general political constellation in the history of late Habsburg Lviv and the province of Galicia at large increasingly favored national segregation or even overt hostility, paired with the continued dominance of Polish-speaking elites. At the same time, the multilingual and multiethnic character of the city—and the encounters therein of people of different languages and religions—remained a reality on the ground that had to be dealt with in everyday life. In fact, urban life placed ever-stronger emphasis on exchange and mobility. In the closely-knit space of modern Lviv, the city’s residents and visitors had ever more dealings with each other, for the purposes of trade and commerce, employment, lodging, entertainment, personal relations, and marriage.7 These had to be conducted in one way or another, raising the question of how the polyglot setting worked in practice in ordinary everyday life. The historiography on language issues in multilingual Lviv, and in Galicia and the Habsburg Monarchy more widely, has so far hardly ever addressed this question. The focus, in Polish, Ukrainian, and Austrian, as well

5  See, e.g., Joshua Shanes, Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 6  See, e.g., Olena Arkuša, “Misce L’vova v dyskusijach pro nacional’nyj charakter Schidnoji Halyčyny na zlami XIX–XX stolit’” [Lviv in discussions about the national character of Eastern Galicia at the turn of the twentieth century], in L’viv: Misto, suspil’stvo, kul’tura [Lviv: City, society, culture], vol. 8/1, ed. Olena Arkuša and Mar’jan Mudryj (L’viv: L’vivs’kyj nacional’nyj universytet, 2012), 365–410; John Czaplicka, “Introduction,” in Lviv: A City in the Crosscurrents of Culture, ed. John Czaplicka (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 13–45; Jaroslav Isajevyč et al., eds., Istorija L’vova [History of Lviv], vol. 2 (Lviv: “Centr Jevropy,” 2007), 238–79, 371–88, 414–24, 475–82; John-Paul Himka, “Dimensions of a Triangle: PolishUkrainian-Jewish Relations in Austrian Galicia,” in Focusing on Galicia: Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians, ed. Israel Bartal and Antony Polonsky (London; Portland: Littman Library, 1999), 25–48; Yaroslav Hrytsak, “Lviv: A Multicultural History,” in Czaplicka, Lviv, 47–73. 7  Svjatoslav Pacholkiv, “Zwischen Einbeziehung und Ausgrenzung: Die Juden in Lemberg 1918–1919”, in Vertraut und fremd zugleich: Jüdisch-christliche Nachbarschaften in Warschau— Lengnau—Lemberg, ed. Alexandra Binnenkade et al. (Cologne: Böhlau, 2009), 164.

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as in wider international scholarship, has hitherto been on demographics and language policy. I will review some of the numerous relevant demographic studies in section two. The scholarship on the increasingly elaborate language policies of the central and provincial legislatures of the late Habsburg Monarchy, produced since the days of the monarchy itself, is equally large. It includes influential work by Austrian scholars of the time, such as the compendium of sources by the lawyer Alfred von Fischel8 and the detailed entry on language laws as applied to administrative and judicial bodies in the most important encyclopedia of the late Monarchy’s law and its constitution by Ernst Mischler and Joseph Ulbrich.9 In our times, the Austrian historian Gerald Stourzh provided an influential analysis of the constitutional framework and its implementation,10 to name just a few relevant studies. Language policy in education has attracted particular attention, including Hannelore Burger’s important study on the monarchy at large11 and, on Galicia more specifically, the comprehensive bibliographies by the Polish historian Andrzej Miessner,12 Florentyna Rzemeniuk’s study of primary schools,13 and Ann Sirka’s emphatically Ukrainian survey,14 again to name just a few. That the language issues in Galicia and its capital, and across the Habsburg Monarchy, have been studied mainly with reference to language policy and 8  Alfred von Fischel, Das österreichische Sprachenrecht (Brünn: Irrgang, 1910). 9  Ernst Mischler and Joseph Ulbrich, eds., Österreichisches Staatswörterbuch: Handbuch des gesamten österreichischen Rechts, vol. 2 (Vienna: Hölder, 1905), 371–87. 10  Gerald Stourzh, “Die Gleichberechtigung der Volksstämme als Verfassungsprinzip 1848– 1918”, in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. 3, part 2, ed. Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1980), 957–1206. 11  Hannelore Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit im österreichischen Unterrichtswesen von 1867 bis 1918 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1993). 12  Andrzej Meissner and Stefan Możdżer, eds., Bibliografia dziejów oświaty i wychowania w Galicji 1772–1918 [Bibliography of the history of education and schooling in Galicia, 1772–1918] (Rzeszów: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna, 1992); Andrzej Meissner and Julian Dybiec, eds., Bibliografia dziejów oświaty i wychowania w Galicji 1772–1918, vol. 2 (Rzeszów: Uniwersytet Rzeszowski, 2007); Andrzej Meissner and Kazimierz Szmyd, eds., Bibliografia dziejów oświaty i wychowania w Galicji 1772–1918, vol. 3 (Rzeszów: Uniwersytet Rzeszowski, 2012). 13  Florentyna Rzemeniuk, Unickie szkoły początkowe w Królestwie Polskim i Galicji (1772– 1914) [Greek Catholic primary schools in the Kingdom of Poland and Galicia, 1772–1914] (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 1991). 14  Ann Sirka, The Nationality Question in Austrian Education: The Case of Ukrainians in Galicia, 1867–1914 (Frankfurt: Lang, 1980).

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demographic data is due to the fact that these are the areas where relevant sources are amply and readily available for the modern period. As far as language laws are concerned, there are detailed records of the legislative processes and accompanying political discussions.15 As to demographics, the rapid development of modern population censuses and statistical methods since the second half of the nineteenth century produced a large amount of data available in the present day.16 However, legal projections and macroscopic population data do not reveal how multilingual settings worked on the ground, in dayto-day life. For contemporary settings, there is direct observation, with a rich recent tradition in the sociolinguistic study of a wide variety of multilingual communities.17 The workings of multilingualism in the past are more elusive and pose the question of what sources can be used to reconstruct them. The Germanist Stefaniya Ptashnyk, for example, consulted annual school reports to reveal what languages were used and taught in reality at the Lviv Gymnasien (grammar schools) from 1850 onward.18 The contributors to an edited volume by the late Viennese linguist Rosita Schjerve-Rindler quantified actual linguistic choices, utilizing direct evidence from school, court, and administrative records from different parts of the late monarchy.19 Systematic empirical studies of this kind are rare though. This is where the present chapter seeks to make a novel contribution. It explores criminal court records as sources that grant privileged glimpses into ordinary people’s daily rounds and their linguistic conduct in the streets, courtyards, offices, flats, and inns of fin-de-siècle Lviv. The following section will set the scene by way of presenting the city’s well-documented demographics and 15  For example, on language policy in Galician education, see Jarosław Moklak, W walce o tożsamość Ukraińców: Zagadnienie języka wykładowego w szkołach ludowych i średnich w pracach galicyjskiego Sejmu 1866–1892 [The struggle for Ukrainian identity: The question of the language of instruction in primary and secondary schools in the proceedings of the Galician Diet, 1866–1892] (Cracow: Historia Iagellonica, 2004). 16  On Habsburg censuses, see Emil Brix, Die Umgangssprachen in Altösterreich zwischen Agitation und Assimilation: Die Sprachenstatistik in den zisleithanischen Volkszählungen, 1880–1910 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1982). 17  See, e.g., Tej K. Bhatia and William C. Ritchie, eds., The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilingualism (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), part 3. 18  Stefaniya Ptashnyk, “Stadtsprachen historisch betrachtet: Zur Beschreibung der Mehr­ sprachigkeit in Lemberg 1848–1900”, in Stadtsprache(n)—Variation und Wandel: Beiträge der 30. Tagung des Internationalen Arbeitskreises Historische Stadtsprachenforschung, Regensburg, 3.–5. Oktober 2012, ed. Christoph Kolbeck et al. (Heidelberg: Winter, 2013), 103–9. 19  Rosita Rindler-Schjerve, ed., Diglossia and Power: Language Policies and Practice in the 19th Century Habsburg Empire (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003).

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the resulting linguistic imbalance, which favored its Polish-speaking elites. The subsequent sections will explore this imbalance in more detail based on an inductive analysis of selected court records. The main merit of this approach is that it shows the linguistic patterns of how, in actual terms, non-native and also native speakers of Polish dealt with the Polish-dominated and yet still multilingual setting. From this it will emerge that the actual workings of multilingualism were more varied and nuanced than the demographics and the well-rehearsed, yet over-schematic view of late Habsburg Lviv as a predominantly Polish city suggest. 2

Demographics and General Patterns of Multilingual Competence

The first part of this section will focus on Lviv’s demographics around the turn of the twentieth century. Our knowledge in this aspect derives from the four late Habsburg censuses of 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910, as well as from additional data collected or calculated by the city’s statistical bureau.20 For instance, the census of 1890 yielded the following results for the city of Lviv with respect to its linguistic composition: 12,162 speakers of German as their main “conversational language” (9.7 percent), as the term on the census questionnaire went; 103,999 Polish speakers (82.7 percent); 9,067 “Ruthenian,” i.e., Ukrainian speakers (7.2 percent); and 459 speakers of other languages (0.4 percent). As far as the city’s religious composition was concerned, the results were as follows: 67,286 Roman Catholic (52.6 percent), 21,876 Greek Catholic (17.1 percent), 36,130 Jewish (28.2 percent), and 2,651 of other religions, especially Protestants (2.1 percent). The surrounding court district of suburban Lviv, from parts of which residents could easily commute into the city, had the following figures: 702 German speakers (1.4 percent), 26,011 Polish speakers (53.9 percent), 21,519

20  Konrad Wnęk, Lidia Zyblikiewicz, and Ewa Callahan, eds., Ludność nowoczesnego Lwowa w latach 1857–1938 [The population of modern Lviv in the years 1857–1938] (Cracow: Societas Vistulana, 2006). The editors, apart from drawing on Austrian census data, use interesting further data available from: Stanisław Pazyra, “Ludność Lwowa w pierwszej ćwierci XX wieku” [The population of Lviv in the first quarter of the twentieth century], in Studja z historji społecznej i gospodarczej poświęcone prof. dr. Franciszkowi Bujakowi [Studies in social and economic history, dedicated to Prof. Dr. Franciszek Bujak] (Lwów: Drukarnia Naukowa, 1931), 415–46; Stanisław Hoszowski, Ekonomiczny rozwój Lwowa w latach 1772–1914 [The economic development of Lviv in the years 1772–1914] (Lviv: Izba Przemysłowo-Handlowa, 1935).

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Ukrainian speakers (44.6 percent), and 32 speakers of other languages (0.1 percent). As far as religion is concerned, the results were as follows: 22,706 Roman Catholic (46.8 percent), 21,302 Greek Catholic (44 percent), 3,907 Jewish (8.1 percent), and 541 of other religions (1.1 percent), particularly Protestants.21 While these censuses are generally indicative of the city’s linguistic composition, these figures need to be treated with caution due to a number of interfering factors. The censuses became a tool of ever-increasing national agitation. In particular, the census rubric of “conversational language” was perceived and used as a proxy for ethnicity in a climate of increasing national antagonism. Due to the political set-up in Galicia, the census produced results that increased the proportion of Poles in particular.22 Officials filled in the census questionnaires during their visits, rather than the respondents themselves. This offered numerous opportunities for data to be manipulated, either deliberately or by accident. Only in urban areas did proprietors of apartment houses or heads of families inhabiting a flat fill in the questionnaires themselves (the former on behalf of their residents).23 The general political bias favoring the province’s Polish elites led many commentators to the conclusion that one should draw on the religious, rather than the linguistic composition as a more reliable meas­ure. This is straightforwardly true for Jews, because the list of languages that could be selected on the census questionnaire did not include Yiddish, and most Jewish Lvivians had Yiddish as their native tongue. As a result, they were forced to associate with a different language. Originally, this was more typically German, but there was an ongoing shift towards Polish as the then-dominant language of the province.24 As this was largely on paper only, one needs to look at the census data for religion to know the approximate number of Yiddish speakers

21  K  . K. Statistische Central-Commission, ed., Die Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31. December 1890 in den im Reichsrathe vertretenen Königreichen und Ländern, vol. 32/1 of Österreichische Statistik (Vienna: K. K. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1892), 106–7, 114–15, 163, 166; K. K. Statistische Central-Commission, ed., Special-Orts-Repertorium von Galizien: Neubearbeitet auf Grund der Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31. December 1890 (Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1893), 1, 302–7. 22  Brix, Sprachenstatistik, 353–89. 23  Mischler and Ulbrich, Staatswörterbuch, vol. 4, 850. 24  Jerzy Holzer, “‘Vom Orient die Fantasie, und in der Brust der Slawen Feuer …’: Jüdisches Leben und Akkulturation im Lemberg des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts”, in Lemberg, Lwów, Lviv: Eine Stadt im Schnittpunkt europäischer Kulturen, ed. Peter Fässler et al. (Cologne: Böhlau, 1993), 75–91; Max Rosenfeld, Die polnische Judenfrage: Problem und Lösung (Vienna; Berlin: R. Löwit Verlag, 1918), 82–4, 132–150; Shanes, Diaspora Nationalism, 37.

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present. In a less obvious, but equally important manner, such a consideration also applies to Polish and Ukrainian speakers. Polish speakers tended to be Roman Catholic, while Ukrainian speakers were usually Greek Catholic. The equation certainly does not hold in all cases. However, given that Ukrainians in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lviv may have felt or been effectively put under pressure to declare Polish, the city’s dominant language, as theirs too, the number of Greek Catholics provides a less distorted estimate of Ukrainian speakers than the language data itself. Note, for example, that the number of Ukrainian speakers reported above for the city of Lviv was only 9,067 (7.2 percent), while there were 21,876 Greek Catholics (17.1 percent). The contrast is likely due to some underreporting of “Ruthenian” and, thus, quite possibly a reflection of the political climate and census techniques. One further factor needs to be mentioned too: The census surveyed “conversational language” for residents only, while the other rubrics, such as religion, captured everyone present at the time of the census, including visitors and military personnel who were not regular residents. Despite these caveats the census data testifies to the distinctly multilingual character of late Habsburg Lviv and its surroundings. There was little physical segregation of the city’s ethnolinguistic constituencies. Its Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics generally lived all over Lviv, with no particular settlement patterns.25 Since the Austrian constitution of 1867, Jews were also free to settle anywhere in the city. It is true that there were still many Jewish residents living in the original small Jewish quarter in the eastern corner of the old town.26 More importantly, there also continued to be a large Jewish population in the traditional suburban ghetto, which was located in parts of the third, Żółkiew district to the left and the right of the, by then, underground river Poltva. However, many Jews also resided in the adjacent parts of the second, Kraków district,27 where they lived interspersed among their Christian neighbors. Some physical separation applied to Greek Catholics in so far as they were more numerous around Lviv. Generally, the proportion increased the further away one moved from the city. Even the closest suburban villages, such as Hołosko (Holosko), Zamarstynów (Zamarstyniv), and Zniesienie (Znesinnja)

25  Wnęk et al., Ludność nowoczesnego Lwowa, 91–2. 26  Majer Bałaban, Dzielnica żydowska: Jej dzieje i zabytki [The Jewish quarter: Its history and monuments] (Lviv: Towarzystwo Miłośników Przeszłości, 1909), 11. 27  Bałaban, Dzielnica żydowska, 88–99; Pacholkiv, “Zwischen Einbeziehung und Ausgrenzung,” 181; Markian Prokopovych, Habsburg Lemberg: Architecture, Public Space, and Politics in the Galician Capital, 1772–1914 (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009), 100–110.

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already had a higher proportion of Greek Catholics than the city.28 However, there certainly remained a very strong Roman Catholic presence here too. In fact, any apparent spatial distribution of the city’s ethnolinguistic constituencies was more often a manifestation of social stratification. For example, the above-mentioned areas of the Kraków district were largely characterized by poor residents, both Jewish and Christian, while parts of the first, Halickie district in southern Lviv were home to wealthier residents, again both Christian and Jewish. The distinguishing feature of suburban dwellers was typically that they continued to be smallholders, rather than that they were either Roman or Greek Catholic. These demographic facts were at odds with the political situation. As mentioned earlier, Polish-speaking elites dominated public life. This order was challenged or circumvented by Ukrainian, Jewish, and also some socially divergent Polish activists. To some extent, they created separate, ethnolinguistically defined spheres of public exchange. Still, Polish remained the city’s dominant and prestigious lingua franca,29 second only to the quasi-state language, German. Generally, it was inevitable that Ukrainian speakers would have some knowledge of Polish. The same was true of Yiddish speakers, who had hitherto associated more frequently with German as the prestigious variety.30 There was an important social component to these general patterns of multilingual competence. At the turn of the century, educated Greek Catholic and Jewish members of the middle class acquired proficiency and literacy in Polish (and still in German too) through schools and university. Polish or German may even have been their dominant family language. Their relation to and knowledge of spoken and written Galician-Ukrainian or Yiddish, or of the liturgical languages, varied and often implied a particular political outlook. Older Polish speakers, in turn, would still have remembered the times before the late 1860s when German dominated the city’s Gymnasien and the university. A fair number of biographies of members of the city’s educated elites have been preserved through diaries and memoirs.31 Some of them have been submitted to further 28  K. K. Statistische Central-Kommission, Special-Orts-Repertorium von Galizien, 302–7. 29  Isajevyč et al., Istorija L’vova, vol. 2, 331–2. 30  Israel Bartal, “From Traditional Bilingualism to National Monolingualism,” in Hebrew in Ashkenaz: A Language in Exile, ed. Lewis Glinert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 141–50; Holzer, “Jüdisches Leben und Akkulturation,” 75–91; Wacław Wierzbieniec, “The Processes of Jewish Emancipation and Assimilation in the Multiethnic City of Lviv during the 19th and 20th Centuries,” in Czaplicka, Lviv, 223–50. 31  See, e.g., some of the titles listed in I. Čajkovs’kyj, “Naša memuarystyka” [Our memoir literature], Naukovi zapysky Ukrajins’koho technično-hospodars’koho instytutu 11, no. 14

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historical analysis, including considerations of some linguistic aspects.32 Lviv’s members of the professions—its lawyers, solicitors, professors, writers, doctors, judges, high officials, and teachers—were typically at least bilingual and literate in Polish and German, or trilingual in both these languages alongside Ukrainian or Yiddish. John-Paul Himka points towards particularly prominent polyglot members of Lviv’s elites, such as the writer Ivan Franko, the Greek Catholic metropolitan archbishop Andryj Šeptyc’kyj, and the scholar Wilhelm Feldman.33 However, it was not primarily the well-educated, fully bi- or multilingual members of the professional and middle class who shaped Lviv’s linguistic landscape. There were many more ordinary city dwellers, who in large part were illiterate. According to the census data of 1890, of those 127,943 present in the city, 47,694, (37.3 percent), were entirely illiterate. This proportion increased to 66.1 percent (i.e., 32,023 out of 48,456 residents) in the suburban court district of Lviv.34 In fact, Lviv had an extraordinarily high rate of illiteracy compared to other cities of the monarchy.35 The low educational attainment in late Habsburg Galicia in general is well documented.36 As a result, Lviv’s (1966): 63–94; Antoni Knot, ed., Galicyjskie wspomnienia szkolne [Galician school memoirs] (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1955), li–lviii. 32  See, e.g., Olena Arkuša, “Šljach ukrajins’koho polityka z provinciji do L’vova: Polityčni dylemy Jevhena Olesnyc’koho” [The trajectory of a Ukrainian politician from the province to Lviv: The political dilemmas of Jevhen Olesnyc’kyj], in Lwów: Miasto, społeczeństwo, kultura [Lviv: City, society, culture], vol. 5, ed. Kazimierz Karolczak (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Pedagogicznej, 2005), 79–103; Karolina Grodziska, “Józef Reichert (1854–1918) radca Sądu Krajowego Wyższego we Lwowie” [Józef Reichert (1854–1918), counselor at the Provincial High Court in Lviv], in Lwów: Miasto, społeczeństwo, kultura [Lviv: City, society, culture], vol. 7, ed. Kazimierz Karolczak and Łukasz Sroka (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Pedagogicznego, 2010), 280–91; Łukasz Sroka, “Zaangażowanie społeczne elit żydowskich we Lwowie w okresie autonomii galicyjskiej” [Public engagement of the Jewish elites in Lviv in the era of Galician autonomy], in Olena Arkuša and Mar’jan Mudryj, L’viv, vol. 8/1, 351–64; Oleksandr Stasjuk, “Stepan Fedak: Štrychy do portreta l’vivs’koho advokata i hromads’koho dijača” [Stepan Fedak: Sketches for a portrait of the Lviv lawyer and public activist], in Olena Arkuša and Mar’jan Mudryj, L’viv, vol. 8/1, 115–28. 33  Himka, “Polish-Ukrainian-Jewish Relations,” 45. 34  K. K. Statistische Central-Commission, Die Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31. December 1890, 107, 115. 35  K. Ostaszewski-Barański, Wiadomości statystyczne o mieście Lwowie [Statistical facts about the city of Lviv], vol. 3 (Lviv: Gmina król. stoł. m. Lwowa, 1894), 29–31. 36  Michał Baczkowski, “Analfabetyzm w Galicji w dobie konstytucyjnej” [Illiteracy in Galicia in the constitutional era], in Naród—Państwo: Europa Środkowa w XIX i XX wieku: Studia ofiarowane Michałowi Pułaskiemu w 50-lecie pracy naukowej [People—state: Central

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day-to-day linguistic life was largely characterized by a distinctly vernacular usage of an urban, eastern borderland variety of Polish, sometimes referred to as bałak (patois). The term derives from Ukrainian balakaty (to chat). Its grammar was clearly Polish-based, but had been subject to substantial Ukrainian substrate and adstrate influences, with numerous additional lexical loans from German and Yiddish.37 It was this particular dialect with which the city and its suburbs’ Yiddish and Ukrainian speakers were often to some extent acquainted, too. Written standard Polish, let alone German, as used during official and public occasions remained a foreign tongue to most, including the city’s many illiterate, bałak-speaking Poles. These general patterns, while valid as such, reveal little about how multilingual competence among ordinary Lvivians took shape, adapted, and worked in actual everyday practice. In the following sections, I will submit select criminal court cases to inductive analyses that aim at revealing a more nuanced and fine-grained picture of how the individuals involved acquired their multilingual competencies, and why they chose one language over another in a particular context.38 Establishing as much as possible of the individuals’ linguistic biographies and their social networks is key to this approach. It is informed by qualitative research which introduced the concept of social networks to sociolinguistics, and which posits that individuals make linguistic choices depending on the social role they assume in a communicative interaction.39 The discussion, in sections three to five, will focus, in turn, on native Yiddish, Ukrainian, and Polish speakers who belonged to the city’s main population of lower-class residents. The conclusion in section six will assess the prospects and limitations of the proposed analyses.

Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth century: Studies dedicated to Michał Pułaski on the 50th anniversary of academic work], ed. Artur Patek and Wojciech Rojek (Cracow: Uniwersytet Jagielloński, 2006), 97–113. 37  Zofia Kurzowa, Polszczyzna Lwowa i kresów południowo-wschodnich do 1939 roku [The Polish language of Lviv and the southeastern borderlands until 1939] (Warsaw; Cracow: PWN, 1983). 38  For an earlier, first case study of a similar kind, see Robert Pyrah and Jan Fellerer, “Redefining ‘sub-culture’: A new lens for understanding hybrid cultural identities in EastCentral Europe with a case study from early 20th century L’viv-Lwów-Lemberg,” Nations and Nationalism 21, no. 4 (2015): part two. 39  One of the earliest applications of such an approach is by Jan Petter Blom and John J. Gumperz, “Social Meaning in Linguistic Structures: Code-Switching in Norway,” in Directions in Sociolinguistics, ed. John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), 407–34.

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Bi- and Multilingualism among Yiddish-Speaking Lvivians

This section will focus on two case studies concerning Yiddish-speaking Lvivians. One concerns a certain Ozias Schubert and his wife Mariam.40 In December 1893 they were accused of embezzlement. The sums involved were large enough for the case to come before the regional criminal court.41 Ozias Schubert, a trained goldsmith, borrowed money from a certain Pinkas Minkes and Zygmunt Panzer, a long-standing friend of his. The purpose was to open his own shop right in the center of the old town, at 34 Market Square. He also borrowed goods from his well-established fellow jewelers Naftali Adler at 17 Market Square, Markus Probstein at 30 Market Square, Abraham Raps at 17 Karol Ludwik Street, Dawid Raucher at 15 Market Square, Majer Schöps at 29 Market Square, and Jakób Waldmann at 6 Krakowska Street.42 However, his business faltered. Unable to pay back his loans, he pretended to trade with the loaned goods as a commission business. In reality he deposited the items with the pawnbroker Antoni Ostrowski. He also pawned jewelry given to him for repair by two customers, a certain Izaak and Henia Kastner, and a certain Horowitz of Blacharska Street in the old town’s original Jewish quarter. In the event, Schubert used false names, including his wife’s maiden name “Leinwand.” In March 1894 Schubert was found guilty and punished with five years of imprisonment. In June, the sentence was reduced to one and half years in jail following the appeal of Schubert’s mother. The minutes of the custodial interrogation and the court verdicts state that Schubert was Jewish and born in Komarno, about 30 kilometers to the southwest of Lviv, in August 1870. He was married to Mariam of Lviv according to Jewish rites, and had been a resident in Lviv for fourteen years, where he trained as a goldsmith and, as mentioned above, opened his own workshop 40  Central’nyj Deržavnyj Istoryčnyj Archiv Ukrajiny, m. L’viv, Fond 152: Krajovyj sud, m. L’viv, Opys 2: Karnyj viddil, Sprava 17240: Sprava Šuberta Oziaša. 41  For a survey of the late Habsburg legal system, see Wilhelm Brauneder, Österreichische Verfassungsgeschichte (Vienna: Manz, 2009); Werner Ogris, “Die Rechtsentwicklung in Cisleithanien 1848–1918,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. 2, ed. Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (Vienna: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1975), 538–662. 42  Księga adresowa stoł. miasta Lwowa: Pierwszy Rocznik [Address book of the capital city Lviv: First edition] (Lviv: Fr. Reichman, 1897), 192–3. The Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv provides excellent online resources to identify locations in historical Lviv, such as historical maps and an interactive map of Lviv: “Center for Urban History of East Central Europe,” www.lvivcenter.org (accessed 11 November 2018).

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at 34 Market Square. Importantly, the records also state that Schubert knew Yiddish, German, and Polish, and that he could write “a little” in German. These pieces of information are instructive for making further informed assumptions about Schubert’s linguistic biography. This can be done with the help of the ever more detailed demographic and geographical data gathered and analyzed since the late nineteenth century. Komarno, Schubert’s birthplace and place of residence until he moved to Lviv, was characterized by its predominantly Jewish population in the center. By projecting back somewhat the more detailed census data of 1890, it becomes clear that the town’s Christians settled in the suburbs.43 The Jewish character of Komarno is also evidenced from the fact that there were two synagogues, one of which came to be the home of a well-known Hasidic dynasty.44 Given that Schubert left Komarno, a rather impoverished town by the end of the nineteenth century,45 to learn a trade in Lviv, it would seem unlikely that his home adhered to Hasidism. There was a state elementary school in Komarno, which Schubert would have been obliged to attend from the age of six (beginning in 1876) for 6 years. The school was comparatively large with three, and later four, parallel classes.46 One can infer from the provincial school board’s annual reports of the period that the language of instruction was Polish, while Ukrainian would have been a taught subject. However, these reports also show an extraordinarily high degree of non-attendance.47 It is not clear, but it would seem unlikely that Schubert attended this school. It is also unknown whether he attended a Komarno cheder, i.e., a traditional Jewish school, where many parents would have still sent their 43  K. K. Statistische Central-Kommission, Special-Orts-Repertorium von Galizien, 451–2. 44  Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust, vol. 2 (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 651; Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, eds., Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 12 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), 282, http://gale.cengage.co.uk (accessed 11 November 2018). 45  Bronisław Chlebowski et al., eds., Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich [Geographical dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and other Slavonic countries], vol. 4 (Warsaw: Władysław Walewski, 1883), 301–5. 46  Szematyzm Królestwa Galicyi i Lodomeryi z Wielkiem Księstwem Krakowskiem na rok 1876 [List of officials of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria with the Grand Duchy of Cracow for the year 1876] (Lviv: A. J. O. Rogosz, 1876), 52. 47  Sprawozdanie c.k. Rady szkolnej krajowej o stanie wychowania publicznego w roku 1876/7 [Report of the provincial Imperial-Royal School Board on the state of public education in the year 1876/7] (Lviv: Rada szkolna krajowa, 1878), 6, 17–22; Sprawozdanie c.k. Rady szkolnej krajowej o stanie wychowania publicznego w roku 1877/8 (Lviv: Rada szkolna krajowa, 1879), 60, 63; Krajowe Biuro Statystyczne, ed., Rocznik Statystyki Galicyi [Statistical yearbook of Galicia], vol. 1 (Lviv: Piller i spółka, 1886), 84–5, 89.

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children in the 1870s.48 Thus, it cannot be established with certainty where, apart from his native Yiddish, he may have learned his limited literacy in German, which is explicitly mentioned in the records. Nor is it known where exactly he picked up some Polish, which is mentioned explicitly too. If he did in fact not attend elementary school, his knowledge of Polish was presumably the result of repeated direct contact with Polish speakers in his native Komarno. It is clear from the court records that he must have used all three languages in his daily life in Lviv. First and foremost, his peers in the trade from whom he solicited money and goods were Jewish. This is demonstrated by their names and from the fact that their testimonies as witnesses, which have come down in the file, state so explicitly. During personal encounters they would have used their native Yiddish. It appears though that as soon as their dealings required written documents, they switched to German. For instance, the records include various bills that the lenders had issued to Schubert. These are all forms printed and filled out in German, in either the Kurrent (German handwriting) or the Latin script. Schubert must have been able to read and, if required, issue them himself. References to German are also evident from the minutes of Schubert’s interrogation. As expected, these are in Polish, the court’s official language, but they also feature some German slips. One sentence features the German term Vergütung (remuneration).49 Elsewhere, the noun kundsmani (customers) appears; it was known in Polish, but without the German genitive suffix –s. Similar lexical slips into German are attested in some of the testimonies by fellow goldsmiths and jewelers too, perhaps because they made their statements in German, while the minute taker translated and recorded them in Polish, or perhaps because they made their statements in imperfect Polish and added some German insertions themselves. In any case, Schubert and his peers clearly employed German for certain purposes. However, they needed Polish too. For example, the records show that the pawnbroker whom Schubert used, Antoni Ostrowski, was Christian. It is likely that the local variety of Polish was the medium of conversation between him and Schubert. Additionally, Schubert needed some knowledge of the language to deal with the authorities. For instance, the local tax bureau’s tax statements were in Polish, as can be seen from a token in the file that served as a piece of court evidence. 48  Mirosław Łapot, “Chedery lwowskie w okresie autonomii galicyjskiej (1867–1914)” [Lviv Jewish schools in the period of Galician autonomy], Kwartalnik Historii Żydów 3 (2014): 397. 49  The sentence reads “tylko za grzeczność miałem Kastnerowi dać Vergütung 5 fl. lub 6 fl.” [only as a matter of courtesy, I was supposed to give Kastner a recompense of 5 or 6 gulden].

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In sum, the picture that emerges is that of a Jewish Lvivian whose daily round included frequent encounters in Yiddish, but who would also have had some knowledge of, and literacy in, German for contacts with his professional peers. He would have had some proficiency in the local Polish vernacular too, for casual professional contacts with Christians and for dealings with the authorities. Beyond its ethnic dimension in the context of late Habsburg Lviv, this trilingual versatility also had social underpinnings. The court case involved some of the most established tradesmen right in the center of the city. Their social and economic activities clearly transcended the confines of traditional shtetl life, which one would have witnessed among some in the Jewish suburb of the third district. In the second case study concerning Yiddish-speaking Lvivians, a similar pattern of social mobility paired with linguistic versatility can be observed. At the same time, there is some significant variation that reflects the ever-growing dominance of Polish in the city. The case concerns a dispute between a certain Sara Gitel Ulak and Anna Cymbaluk.50 It is a sad testimony of human hardship and judicial inefficiency. It took the court over two years, from November 1901 to June 1903, to reach a conclusion and reject the following allegations: Anna Cymbaluk had served at Sara Ulak’s for some years in the second half of the 1890s. Ulak ran a successful formal dress rental company at 3 Krakowska Street in the old town, while Cymbaluk lived at 21 Blacharska Street, the end of the street in the old town that was once traditionally inhabited by Greek Catholics. She had taken loans from Ulak to pay her rent, and in 1899 she stored a trunk with valuable possessions at Ulak’s flat, for a fee, when she went away on a trip to Russia. Cymbaluk complained that Ulak charged usury interest on the loans, and that she stole items from the trunk. Ulak countered that Cymbaluk had not paid back anything at all, including any interest. As a result, she kept the trunk as a guarantee, but out of generosity allowed Cymbaluk to retrieve some essential items, such as bed linens and dishes, when she returned from Russia and lived in various flats in and around Kleparowska Street in the second district. One witness testimony alleged in passing and perhaps maliciously, that at that point, Cymbaluk was engaged in prostitution. It can be established from the file that Sara Gitel Ulak was born in June 1853 in Lviv, widowed and remarried, according to the Jewish rites, to the sales agent Kalman Langer, with whom she had two children. She is also said to have known “jargon” (i.e., Yiddish) and Polish, and to have finished two grades of elementary school. These two years of primary education must have been in the late 50  Central’nyj Deržavnyj Istoryčnyj Archiv Ukrajiny, m. L’viv, Fond 152: Krajovyj sud, m. L’viv, Opys 2: Karnyj viddil, Sprava 20999: Sprava Ulak Sary.

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1850s or early 1860s, when elementary schooling was divided by religious affiliation. This means that Ulak probably attended Lviv’s “urban” “German-Jewish” school,51 founded in 1856.52 As the language of instruction was German, Ulak would have gained literacy in German. As mentioned before, German was at the time generally the preferred written medium among Lviv’s Jews, as is also evidenced from Ulak’s birth certificate, which the city’s Jewish registry had issued in German, including a Germanized variant of her Yiddish second name (Güttel). In fact, it is clear from the file that Ulak was literate, but it also shows that her literacy had shifted to Polish by the end of the century. Not only does she use the Polish orthographic form for her name (Gitel) when signing documents, but such a shift also appears in a linguistically interesting Polish letter that Ulak appears to have written herself. It was addressed to the state prosecution in Lviv where it was received on 12 June 1903. In this letter, Sara Ulak once again offers evidence of her innocence and appeals to the prosecutor that the case, after two and a half years of legal proceedings, should finally be resolved as it damaged her and her husband’s business. What is most interesting about the document in the given context is its linguistic make-up, notably the fact that it is written in not entirely correct Polish. Take, for example, the opening sentence, which reads as follows in English translation: “Following the recommendation of the state prosecution, the police, together with [Anna] Cymbaluk, carried out an inspection at my place, in search of the stolen items.” In the Polish version, there are some obviously incorrect case endings, which are underlined in the original quote below.53 These errors are reminiscent of non-native usage by Yiddish speakers described by Maria Brzezina.54 Still, the letter clearly suggests that Ulak had highly functional proficiency in Polish. The file also leaves no doubt that her daily duties as a successful

51  H  andbuch des Lemberger Statthalterei-Gebiets in Galizien für das Jahr 1860 (Lemberg: K. k. galiz. Aerarial-Staats-Druckerei, 1860), 220. 52  Mirosław Łapot, “Rozwój żydowskiego szkolnictwa świeckiego we Lwowie w latach 1772– 1879” [The development of the Jewish secular school system in Lviv in the years 1772– 1879], Prace Naukowe Akademii im. Jana Długosza w Częstochowie: Pedagogika 22 (2013): 390; Kazimierz Rędziński, Żydowskie szkolnictwo świeckie w Galicji 1813–1918 [The Jewish secular school system in Galicia, 1813–1918] (Częstochowa: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna, 2000), 112. 53  “Na podstawie polecenia C. K. Prokuratoryję Państwa, C. k. Policyja umnie w mojej nieobecności wraz z Cybalkównę rewyzyję przeprowadziła, celem poszukiwania kradzionych przedmioty.” 54  Maria Brzezina, Języki mniejszościowe narodowych w tekstach literackich. I. Południowokresowa polszczyzna Żydów [National minority languages in literary texts. I. The southeastern borderland Polish of Jews] (Cracow: Uniwersytet Jagielloński, 1979).

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businesswoman necessitated this. To prove her innocence, Ulak called on a large number of witnesses who must have provided domestic services, or with whom she must have had professional dealings. On the one hand, these included fellow Jewish Lvivians with whom the usual language of conversation would have been Yiddish: her servant Chana Goldberg, the cook Etla Bach, the grocer Moses Seiler, and the business representative Izrael Czyżes—all residents in the third district. On the other hand, the circle of witnesses also included the seamstress Józefa Żelakowska, the laundress Helena Wartylecka, and the servant Maria Stasiuk, who were residents in the second and third districts. They are on record as either Greek or Roman Catholics, and Sara Ulak would have undoubtedly conversed with them in some variety of the local Polish dialect. Thus, in sum, the picture that emerges is that of a trilingual resident, similar to Ozias Schubert of the first case study. Apart from her native Yiddish, Ulak knew Polish well. She must also have had some knowledge of German from her earlier life. Unlike for Schubert, however, German had lost all significance in Ulak’s daily rounds, while Polish had become central.55 In fact, a document that was issued when Ulak was briefly taken into custody in April 1902 states that she knew Polish and the “jargon” (Yiddish), but does not mention German at all anymore. 4

Bi- and Multilingualism among Ukrainian-Speaking Lvivians

The preponderance of Polish also required Ukrainian-speaking Lvivians to adopt some form of bilingualism. For one example, recall the servant Anna Cymbaluk from the previous case study. The surname is unambiguously Ukrainian, as surnames with the suffix –( j)uk were particularly frequent in Western Ukraine.56 Surnames, however, are unreliable evidence, as Polish speakers could well have surnames that are etymologically Ukrainian and vice versa. Religion is more conclusive, even though it is not unambiguous either, because Greek Catholics could be Polish speakers and Roman Catholics could be Ukrainian speakers. Anna Cymbaluk is on record as a Greek Catholic. Even though none of the documents specify the precise place of birth, she was probably born somewhere across the border in the Russian Empire. Taking these pieces of evidence all together, it can be concluded that she was probably a native speaker of a Volhynian or Podolian Ukrainian dialect. 55  Shanes, Diaspora Nationalism, 39. 56  I.K. Red’ko, Sučasni ukrajins’ki pryzvyšča [Contemporary Ukrainian surnames] (Kiev: Akademija Nauk, 1966), 59.

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Yet, to go about her daily life in Lviv she also needed knowledge of Polish. For example, in her initial complaint, which is contained in the file described in the previous section,57 Cymbaluk called on her neighbor, the seamstress Józefa Błażejówska, as one of her witnesses who could confirm that she deposited a trunk with her possessions at Sara Ulak’s flat. Błażejówska was a Roman Catholic of Frysztak, a small town in western Galicia with Polish as its only language of everyday communication.58 Thus, Błażejówska is an example of an acquaintance with whom Cymbaluk clearly had to converse in some form of Polish. There is no direct evidence of Cymbaluk’s usage of Polish. The proximity of her native western Ukrainian variety to the local Polish dialect would have typically produced a mixed Ukrainian-Polish dialect akin to Polonized forms of western Ukrainian described by Zdzisław Stieber and Natalia Ananiewa.59 Thus, Cymbaluk, who was illiterate, had vernacular bilingual competence. Apart from some form of Polish, there were opportunities for her to use her native Ukrainian dialect too. For example, the file includes a witness testimony by a friend who is on record as the twenty-two-year-old bricklayer Jan Chomicki of Sokal (Sokal’) in the north of Galicia, about 10 kilometers away from the Russian border. Chomicki helped Cymbaluk pack the trunk to be stored at Sara Ulak’s flat, including some very personal items. This, in conjunction with the fact that Cymbaluk was single, may signal that they had a close relationship. Thus, the two would have had frequent opportunities to converse. Unlike the minutes of some other testimonies, those of Chomicki’s statements do not record which languages he knew. Yet there are two factors that indicate that Chomicki was a Ukrainian speaker with whom Cymbaluk could converse in her first language. First, he is on record as a Greek Catholic. The town of Sokal generally had a sizeable proportion of Ukrainian-speaking Greek Catholics, who amounted to around one-third of the town’s population.60 Second, his name could be the Polonized form of the Ukrainian name Ivan Chomyc’kyj,61 57  Central’nyj Deržavnyj Istoryčnyj Archiv Ukrajiny, m. L’viv, Fond 152: Krajovyj sud, m. L’viv, Opys 2: Karnyj viddil, Sprava 20999: Sprava Ulak Sary. 58  K. K. Statistische Central-Kommission, Special-Orts-Repertorium von Galizien, 208. 59  Zdzisław Stieber, Sposoby powstawania słowiańskich gwar przejściowych [Types of emergence of Slavonic transitional dialects] (Cracow: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1938), 13–14; Natalia Ananiewa, “O polszczyźnie Ukraińców okolic Dynowa w okresie międzywojennym” [On the Polish language of Ukrainians around Dynów in the interwar period], in Studia nad Polszczyzną Kresową [Studies on Borderland Polish], vol. 10, ed. Janusz Rieger (Warsaw: “Semper,” 2001), 39–45. 60  Chlebowski et al., Słownik geograficzny [Geographical dictionary], vol. 11, 10; K. K. Statistische Central-Kommission, Special-Orts-Repertorium von Galizien, 545. 61  Red’ko, Sučasni ukrajins’ki pryzvyšča, 85; Kazimierz Rymut, Nazwiska Polaków: Słownik historyczno-etymologiczny [The surnames of Poles: Historical-etymological dictionary], vol. 1 (Cracow: PAN / Wydawnictwo Naukowe DWN, 1999), 611.

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as using Polish forms of given names and surnames was regular practice by court officials. As mentioned above, names are speculative evidence, but here it can be combined with religion and place of birth, likely indicating that Chomicki was in fact a Ukrainian interlocutor of Cymbaluk. At this point, I shall move on to a second case study of a Ukrainian-speaking Lvivian. The analysis will again be based on criminal court records, and what can be learned and inferred from them about the defendant’s linguistic profile and daily rounds in late Habsburg Lviv. The file under investigation concerns a certain Anna Czubata,62 who from April to October 1896 stood trial for the theft of a fur cloak with an estimated value of 60 gulden. The value is significant because according to the Austrian criminal law of 1803/1852 (§173a)—in essence in force until the end of the Monarchy (and beyond)—the theft of items whose value exceeded 25 gulden was considered a crime, rather than a matter for the civil courts. It was alleged that Czubata took the cloak from her employer and landlady Julia Sternberger. On the pretense that her landlady had asked her to do so, she first offered to pawn, then to sell it to a certain Herman (vulgo Chaim) Stahl, a thirty-one-year-old waiter, whom she happened upon in the street. Stahl claimed that he soon realized that he had acquired a stolen item. To avoid any further involvement, he immediately tried to sell the cloak to a certain Samuel Friser. Friser, however, did not buy the cloak, but informed the police, who retrieved the item from Stahl and returned it to Sternberger. Consequently, Anna Czubata and Herman Stahl were put on trial. Czubata did not plead guilty, claiming that Sternberger’s flat had been broken into and the cloak stolen on that occasion. Since the prosecution could not prove otherwise, Czubata was acquitted, while Stahl was found guilty of trading a stolen item. In the course of the court proceedings, it came to light that Czubata’s previous landlady and employer, a certain Zofia Mehrer, accused her of having stolen a valuable brooch, for which the court did find her guilty. The file states that Czubata was a Greek Catholic, born in Mogielnica (Mohyl’nycja) in the east of Galicia. The village was predominantly Greek Catholic and Ukrainian-speaking.63 There can be no doubt that Czubata herself was a Ukrainian speaker too, not least as the personal information accompanying the minutes of an interrogation explicitly states that she knew “Ruthenian” (Ukrainian), and Polish. Since it was rare that a Polish speaker learned Ukrainian to a level that warranted special official mention, it is clear that her native tongue was a southwestern, “Dnister” dialect of Ukrainian. 62  Central’nyj Deržavnyj Istoryčnyj Archiv Ukrajiny, m. L’viv, Fond 152: Krajovyj sud, m. L’viv, Opys 2: Karnyj viddil, 17910: Sprava Čubatoji Anny. 63  Chlebowski et al., Słownik geograficzny, vol. 6, 581; K. K. Statistische Central-Kommission, Special-Orts-Repertorium von Galizien, 612.

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At the time of the court case Czubata was nineteen years of age. Her father was a forest worker, while her mother was deceased. The documents also state explicitly that Czubata was illiterate and had not received any school education, even though by the time she reached the age of compulsory school attendance Mogielnica had two one-class village schools, one in the upper and one in the lower part of the village. There is general data and numerous historical studies available on Ukrainian schooling in post-1869 Galicia.64 Despite these, it usually remains difficult to establish the language of instruction in a particular village school—whether this was Polish or Ukrainian, or whether it was in fact a so-called “utraquist,” or bilingual, school. As to Mogielnica, one would expect that at least one of the two village schools used Ukrainian as its language of instruction, as this was the native language of a clear majority of its inhabitants. However, the teachers of the two schools are named as Karol Gerbrant and Ignacy Krzyżanowski,65 neither of which indicate Ukrainian provenance. As mentioned, Czubata did not attend either one of the two schools. The file reports that she left home at the age of fourteen. She came to Lviv sometime in 1894 to work, in succession, as a servant for three middle-class Lvivian landladies: first, for the above-mentioned Zofia Mehrer, the wife of Dr. Henryk Mehrer, who became the chief physician of the Jewish hospital in Lviv,66 at 6 Kościuszko Street in the second district until April 1895;67 subsequently, briefly for the wife of a certain Łapajówer; and then at Julia Sternberger’s, a widow and remarried merchant’s wife, at 27 Skarbowska Street in the old town from autumn 1895 to the time of the theft in April 1896. Finally, at the time of the court proceedings she had moved in with a widowed landlady at 3 Teatyńska Street off the old town. Apart from the households in which Czubata served, the file introduces a number of other people with whom she was in regular contact, such as her fiancé, Jakób Raczyński, a twenty-six-year-old military police officer. The personal information accompanying his witness statement records that Raczyński was 64  Moklak, W walce o tożsamość Ukraińców; Rzemeniuk, Unickie szkoły początkowe; see also Meissner et al., Bibliografia dziejów oświaty, vols. 1–3. 65  Szematyzm Królestwa Galicyi i Lodomeryi z Wielkiem Księstwem Krakowskiem na rok 1882 [List of officials of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria with the Grand Duchy of Cracow for the year 1882] (Lwów: C. K. Namiestnictwo, 1882), 445. 66  Henryk Mehrer, Szpital lwowskiej gminy wyznaniowej izraelickiej fundacyi Maurycego Lazarusa zbudowany w roku 1903 według projektu prof. Jana Lewińskiego oraz zarys rozwoju szpitala żydowskiego we Lwowie [The Lviv hospital of the Jewish Community of the Maurycy Lazarus Foundation, built in the year 1903 according to the plans of Prof. Jan Lewiński, with a sketch of the development of the Jewish hospital in Lviv] (Lviv: Szpital Lwowskiej Gminy Wyznaniowej Izraelickiej, 1906). 67  Księga adresowa, 165.

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Roman Catholic. He hailed from Rogi in the western part of Galicia, an exclusively Polish-speaking village.68 Raczyński’s native language, thus, was undoubtedly a variety of Polish, which would also have been the language of conversation between him and his fiancée Czubata. Mixed Greek-Roman Catholic couples were relatively frequent in Lviv. Relevant statistical data is only available from 1910 onwards. Konrad Wnęk and his fellow researchers report from data for 1910 that 16 percent (330) of all marriages in the city were exogamous.69 Projecting this figure back into the late nineteenth century, the relation between Czubata and Raczyński was not out of the ordinary. This is significant in so far as such mixed relations provided a particularly fertile ground for the merger of varieties of native Polish and non-native, Ukrainianized Polish that produced the Lviv bałak, the city’s specific urban dialect. It is unknown what precise dialectal variety of Polish Raczyński used, nor how strongly Ukrainianized or otherwise Czubata’s Polish was. Yet it is safe to surmise that the encounters with her fiancé were regular occasions of Czubata’s daily life in which she needed to employ some local variety of Polish. There were many others too. For example, Polish was certainly the lingua franca in conversations with her Jewish landladies, who themselves were non-native speakers, but may have had high proficiency in standard Polish as would have been the case, by that time, with educated Jewish members of Lviv’s middle class. The same applied to her chance encounter in the street with Herman Stahl, who explicitly put on record that he had some limited ability to read in Polish. It is worth adding that he also claimed to have limited reading proficiency in German, and to be fully literate in “Jewish” (Yiddish). The importance of Polish notwithstanding, it is evident from the records that Czubata’s everyday life in fin-de-siècle Lviv also offered opportunities to use her native Ukrainian dialect. The most obvious example comes from the fact that her sister, Maria Czubata, also lived as a servant in Lviv. It appears from Anna Czubata’s interrogation that Maria even worked in the same tenement house for the then-retired Dr. Ignacy Nossig,70 the former secretary of the Jewish Religious Community of Lviv, member of the reformist synagogue, and father of the prominent Polish writer and statistician Alfred Nossig. The file includes contradicting pieces of information on this, but these conflicting reports do not call into question the basic fact that Maria was a resident of Lviv 68  Chlebowski et al., Słownik geograficzny, vol. 9, 662; K. K. Statistische Central-Kommission, Special-Orts-Repertorium von Galizien, 284. 69  Wnęk et al., Ludność nowoczesnego Lwowa, 159. 70  Księga Adresowa Król. Stoł. Miasta Lwowa [Address book of the royal capital city Lviv] (Lviv: Franciszek Reichmann, 1900), 112.

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and must have had regular contact with her sister. On these occasions they surely used their native Ukrainian dialect. In sum, Anna Czubata’s daily rounds in Lviv can be described as evidently bilingual. Her knowledge of Polish was oral. Unchecked against any normative usage, it was probably a Ukrainianized form of the local Polish dialect, albeit potentially highly functional, given the importance of Polish in her professional and private life in Lviv. Yet at the same time, there remained opportunities to employ her native Ukrainian in speech too, even though it can be assumed that such occasions were less frequent than the manifold situations in which the lingua franca was Polish. This is strongly reminiscent of the linguistic profile of Anna Cymbaluk from the first case study in this section. Oral bilingualism with native Ukrainian and acquired competence in the local Polish dialect (featuring a strong Ukrainian influence) was undoubtedly the norm among Greek Catholics from eastern Galicia and neighboring Russia who migrated to Lviv for work, even though the distribution of usage and the degree of proficiency in Polish varied considerably, depending on the individual’s personal and social circumstances. 5

Bi- and Multilingualism among Polish-Speaking Lvivians

Lviv’s largest population segment was made up of Polish speakers, and Polish was also the city’s lingua franca. It would, therefore, seem that Polish-speaking Lvivians, unlike their Ukrainian- and Yiddish-speaking neighbors, did not need to engage in any bi- or multilingual practices. This, however, is too simplistic a view. Native Polish speakers needed to be able to deal with a wide range of adaptions of the urban dialect by Ukrainian, as well as Yiddish and German dialect speakers. The most immediate effect of the intense language contact was the distinct and strong Ukrainian influence on all eastern borderland dialects of Polish in general and on Lviv’s urban vernacular in particular. The majority of Polish-speaking Lvivians, who were not educated members of the middle class, used this vernacular rather than standard Polish. Illiteracy remained widespread despite the advances in primary education in cities and towns in particular. According to the census of 1890, 34.3 percent of male and 40.3 percent of female Lvivians could not read or write at all.71 As a result, for many Polish-speaking Lvivians, occasions that required knowledge of written or standard Polish would have been challenging, such as when they came 71  K  . K. Statistische Central-Commission, Die Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31. December 1890, xxv, lviii; Ostaszewski-Barański, Wiadomości statystyczne, 29–31.

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into contact with the city’s officials in administration, judiciary, or educational institutions. Furthermore, despite the dominance of Polish, there remained pockets of public life in Galicia which continued to be conducted in German. These were domains that, in one way or another, went beyond the confines of the province and involved the wider empire, such as the military, the railways, and administrative channels with imperial authorities in Vienna. To be able to participate in these spheres, Polish-speaking Lvivians needed to acquire knowledge of German as the quasi-state language of the Austrian part of the Habsburg Monarchy. The following case study confirms and illustrates this pattern. It is the most serious of the criminal court proceedings discussed in this chapter. The defendant was a certain Grzegorz Boratynowicz, who was accused and convicted of the murder of his mother Józefa in 1894.72 The crime came to light when Boratynowicz, claiming that his mother had died and that he was raising money for the funeral, sold his mother’s possessions to the peddler Efraim Rothländer in the building of their flat at 8 Głowacki Street in the second district. The caretaker of the house, Antonina Szołdra, observed the transaction and suspected that Boratynowicz had sold the items without his mother’s knowledge. She thus confiscated them from Rothländer, who then made a complaint to the police. During their preliminary investigation the police learned from neighbors that Boratynowicz had frequently quarreled with his mother. Upon entering the flat by force they found Józefa Boratynowicz’s body. Grzegorz pleaded guilty and confessed that, following the crime, he went on a drunken rampage with his friend Władysław Jaruszewski. Found guilty by the jury, he was sentenced to death, which it appears was subsequently commuted to a prison sentence. Due to the utmost gravity of the case, there were reports of the court proceedings in the Lvivian daily Gazeta Lwowska (Lviv Gazette).73 These reports and the archival documents reveal that Boratynowicz was a twenty-one-year-old Roman Catholic Polish speaker from Lviv. While training as a carpenter, his life was troubled, and included bouts of frequent drunkenness and blasphemy, as well as expressions of deep disappointment at his lack of success. At the time of the crime, he had just spent a month in the state railway workshop, and its manager, Jan Schönfeld, reported positively about Boratynowicz’s work as a carpentry apprentice. There are other indicators of his potential: he is on record as fully literate, and according to his sister Helena, 72  Central’nyj Deržavnyj Istoryčnyj Archiv Ukrajiny, m. L’viv, Fond 152: Krajovyj sud, m. L’viv, Opys 2: Karnyj viddil, 16957: Sprava Boratynevyča Hryhorija. 73  “Z Izby sądowej: Morderca własnej matki” [From the courtroom: A murderer of his own mother], Gazeta Lwowska, 17 February 1894, 3–4; 18 February 1894, 4.

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he consumed books of “blasphemous” content given to him by colleagues in the workshop. These may in fact have been political literature, but this is not clear from the file. The newspaper reports also portray him as explicit and clear during the court proceedings. Thus, it can be surmised that his native knowledge of Polish was not restricted to the local vernacular, but included exposure to the written and standard language. Even though clearly originating from a humble background, which included some time spent in an orphanage as a young boy, Boratynowicz must have benefitted from the accessibility of elementary schooling in the capital. There is no explicit mention of the length of his education, but the capital’s elementary schools, albeit overcrowded, typically offered four grades around the time of Boratynowicz’s compulsory attendance.74 At the same time, Boratynowicz undoubtedly had frequent exposure to the local dialect as well as to the various non-native varieties of Polish. For example, the newspaper report of the court case features stylized direct quotes of Efraim Rothländer’s Yiddish-influenced, non-native Polish “jargon,” such as the following, alleged reply to the prosecutor’s question of whether Rothländer knew that Boratynowicz was selling his mother’s possessions: “A peddler never asks.” The non-native forms are underlined in the Polish original below.75 When Boratynowicz continued his apprenticeship in the state railway workshop with the master Jan Schönfeld, he would have also found himself exposed to some German. It is explicitly on record that Schönfeld partly gave his testimony in German, which was subsequently translated for the defendant. Therefore, Boratynowicz did not know the language, and the episode serves as a reminder that Polish-speaking Lvivians, too, experienced certain limits to the currency of Polish in Lviv even as late as the 1890s. Such an episode indicates that multilingualism involved all constituencies of late Habsburg Lviv, even if this must not deflect from the fact that the city’s Yiddish and Ukrainian speakers typically faced more complicated linguistic challenges. These challenges, however, were not only conditioned ethnically and linguistically. Class and an individual’s personal background played equally important roles. 6 Conclusion The overall picture that emerges from the case studies is one of patterned heterogeneity. Some form of Yiddish-Polish and Ukrainian-Polish bilingualism 74  S zematyzm Królestwa Galicyi i Lodomeryi [List of officials of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria], 418–419. 75  “Handełe nigdy się nie pita.”

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was clearly requisite for many non-native speakers of Polish to be able to conduct their daily lives in the city. So were the skills required—and this also applies to the city’s Poles—to navigate the range of Polish varieties present, from the standard written language and the local vernacular, to types of non-native usage. Certain domains still demanded knowledge of German too. Expected as these patterns may be given what is known about the general linguistic situation in late Habsburg Lviv, the case studies reveal important further modulations. The resulting heterogeneity depended on social and personal factors. The significance of these is perhaps less expected and represents the actual merit of an inductive study of court materials as a window into multilingualism in late Habsburg everyday life. For instance, recall the differences between Ozias Schubert und Sara Ulak of section two. Their reliance on German, or lack thereof, differed significantly as a result of their professional lives and the types of contact it necessitated, as well as the particular moment in time. Similarly, it is likely that there was a contrast in the level of competence in Polish between Anna Cymbaluk and Anna Czubata of section three. Cymbaluk regularly traveled back to her native, Ukrainian-speaking environs and served for a Jewish landlady and small entrepreneur whose command of Polish was certainly functional, but markedly non-native. On the other hand, at least one of Czubata’s employers, the Mehrers, were highly integrated into the Polish-speaking middle class of Lviv, and she had a Polish-speaking fiancé from outside eastern Galicia. Thus, Czubata’s exposure to standard Polish was probably much more substantial. Also, recall Herman Stahl of section three, who is reported to have been fully literate in “Jewish.” The non-Jewish court officials could not tell whether literacy in the Hebrew alphabet meant Yiddish or literary Hebrew. In the given context and time, the former is more likely.76 Thus, Stahl must have attended a cheder and had a linguistic outlook versed in Jewish traditions, which Schubert and Ulak lacked if they were in fact not literate in the Hebrew alphabet as the files suggest. This type of inference and others made in this chapter rest upon extracting attested personal and biographic information, and expanding upon it with the help of the historical demographic and geographical data available. This is only possible because the range and detail of the latter increased significantly in the late nineteenth century. However, there is also an important caveat concerning this analytical and interpretative procedure. It is based on assumptions about what was typically the case in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, assumptions, for example, that ordinary Lvivians would have normally had one native language and not more; that Greek-Catholics would have typically been 76  Shanes, Diaspora Nationalism, 111–12; Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, vols. 1–2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

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Ukrainian speakers; that schools attended would have been in the place that is recorded as the individual’s birth place and not elsewhere; and that in Lviv the lingua franca between speakers of different native languages would have normally been a variety of Polish. However, this does not necessarily hold in each and every case, and may lead to some false conclusions. The key mitigating device consists of cross-referencing the facts that are explicitly on record about an individual. For instance, religion, birthplace, and name—if these are on record—provide a reasonably reliable combination of features with which to deduce someone’s linguistic profile if this is not mentioned explicitly in the file. Occupation, place of residence, and range of languages known—if all this is on record—represent a reasonably reliable combination of characteristics with which to trace someone’s linguistic conduct in everyday life. It is, thus, this combination of attested facts with inference that, I would argue, offers glimpses of everyday multilingual practices in late Habsburg Lviv. Among ordinary Lvivians, these practices were distinctly vernacular and fluid, blending and shifting between variants of the local Polish slang, Ukrainian dialects, and colloquial Yiddish. In the face of political aspirations of the time that sought to identify individuals with only one standard national language, it is tempting to interpret these hybrid linguistic practices as manifestations of national indifference, a prime concern of political activists at the time that has recently received renewed interest in historical scholarship on the Habsburg Monarchy.77 This, however, must remain speculation. The court files do not provide any explicit evidence as to whether the defendants and witnesses on record thought of themselves in predominantly religious or national terms, or whether they were largely oblivious to national categories, with the city and their social standing within it as their prime points of reference. It may seem conspicuous that there is never any reference to nationality in the files. However, this is not evidence of national indifference on the part of the people on record. It was rather the established practice at the courts, presumably because before the criminal law, everyone was an Austrian citizen,

77  Pieter Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 19–65; Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Andreas Moritsch, ed., Vom Ethnos zur Nationalität: Der nationale Differenzierungsprozeß am Beispiel ausgewählter Orte in Kärnten und im Burgenland (Vienna; Munich: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik; Oldenbourg Verlag, 1991); Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).

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and not a member of an ethnolinguistically defined nation. This was in stark contrast to the legislation and jurisdiction pertaining to citizens’ rights. Here, the Austrian legal system put ever greater emphasis on attributing her citizens to one national group and language.78 There was a modernizing aspect to this as it facilitated literacy and social inclusion. However, there was a regressive element too, as it led to ethnolinguistic divisions at the expense of a more cohesive citizenry. The court records studied suggest that the lower-class populace of late Habsburg Lviv maintained a degree of linguistic cohesion, by way of blending, and shifting between, non-standard oral dialects. To be sure, this was due to poor literacy and the imbalance in status between German, Polish, Ukrainian, and Yiddish. At the same time, however, this was also a resource for a functioning multilingual coexistence.

78  Gerald Stourzh, “Ethnic Attribution in Late Imperial Austria: Good Intentions, Evil Consequences,” in The Habsburg Legacy: National Identity in Historical Perspective, ed. Ritchie Robertson and Edward Timms (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1994), 67–83.

Chapter 12

How Jesus Became a Woman, Climbed the Mountain, and Started to Roar: Habsburg Bukovina’s Celebrated Multilingualism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Jeroen van Drunen 1 Introduction In 1774, hegemony over the territory thereafter known as Bukovina shifted from the Ottoman Empire to Austria under conditions that are still under debate. To encourage the development of the sparsely settled land, the Austrian emperors initially subsidized the immigration of colonists to Bukovina. After the end of these official immigration programs, colonists continued to arrive at their own expense, with the result that in the course of its existence as a Habsburg crown land (1774–1918), the population of Bukovina grew tenfold to over 800,000 inhabitants. People of many different linguistic and religious affiliations were represented in Bukovina, including large numbers of Romanian and Ruthenian (Ukrainian) speakers, but also speakers of Polish, Hungarian, Armenian, and Russian. There were Jews, Orthodox Christians, Greek Catholics, and Lippovan Old Believers. As nationalist activism in other Austrian crown lands intensified and gradually intoxicated political and social relations, Bukovina—with its many languages and religious denominations—was increasingly perceived as a role model of tolerance and diversity. During the final decades of the empire’s existence, Bukovina was consciously deployed as pars pro toto for a utopian Austria in which the manifold national identifications were to enhance the state rather than undermine it. As the Habsburg Empire struggled to perform the balancing act between Viennese central power and increasing nationalist demands from all over its territory, and tried to position itself with all its diversity as “a model for Europe,” inside its borders something similar occurred: both in and outside the crown land, the commonplace of Bukovina as “Little Austria” with its Viennese orientation and vibrant cultural life gained ground. In contrast to rural illiteracy, the Bukovinian capital Czernowitz (Chernivtsi/

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004407978_013

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Cernăuţi), often depicted as a small version of Vienna, had a wide circle of intellectuals, a dynamic university, and a lively local political scene. Nationalist agitation reached Bukovinian society relatively late, which further enhanced its peaceful image. Unlike in neighboring regions, Jews enjoyed full freedoms in Bukovina. They were therefore prominent and contributed significantly to the crown land’s cultural production. 2

Multilingualism vs. Monolingualism

With the arrival of the Habsburgs, German was introduced as the lingua franca and language of administration. Bukovina soon became famous not only for its multitude of languages, but also acquired some fame for the alleged multilingualism of its population. Both Habsburg and post-Habsburg sources claim that many Bukovinians, especially those in Czernowitz, mastered three languages or more. Rudolf Wagner maintained that almost every inhabitant of Austrian Czernowitz had mastered three languages, some even four, and “if one takes Yiddish into consideration, even five,”1 thus painting a rather rosy picture of the language skills of the inhabitants of Czernowitz. The sociologist Walter B. Simon has famously suggested in his classic study that multilingualism only becomes a topic of discussion in a political system where urbanization and industrialization is advanced by (and further advances) a public-school system that prepares candidates for entry into government and other forms of public service. A preindustrial, rural, and predominantly illiterate society can easily accommodate peacefully any number of language groups as long as the members of its educated elite share a lingua franca. Simon adds that “as long as language groups are territorially separated they may be served by their own monolingual institutions … Tensions are bound to arise if they cannot speak to one another.”2 Austrian Bukovina might effortlessly be identified as a preindustrial, rural, and predominantly illiterate society, with German as the lingua franca shared by its educated elite. In this

1  Marie Mischler, Soziale und wirtschaftliche Skizzen aus der Bukowina (Vienna; Leipzig: Weiß, 1893), 7; Rudolf Wagner, Vom Halbmond zum Doppeladler: Ausgewählte Beiträge zur Geschichte der Bukowina und der Czernowitzer Universität “Francisco-Josephina” (Augsburg: Verlag “Der Südostdeutsche,” 1996), 219. 2  Walter B. Simon, “Multilingualism, A Comparative Study,” in Studies in Multilingualism, ed. Nels Anderson (Leiden: Brill Archive, 1969), 11–12.

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respect, Simon’s shoe seems to fit. Two aspects of the crown land, however, were markedly different. First, language groups were sometimes, but most definitely not always, territorially separated. Second—and this addresses the heart of the matter of this contribution—it is suggested that language groups are essentially monolingual. Surely this does not apply to Bukovina and many other regions, irrespective of time and location. What has been published on the subject of Habsburg Bukovina and its inhabitants has so far always relied on statistical data from Habsburg authorities, which did not take the multilingualism of the crown land’s subjects into account. If scholars want to gain insight into the latter, they will have to tap into different sources. In this contribution, nearly every type of primary source available has been taken into account: memoirs, governmental reports, contemporary fiction, journalism, pamphlets, satires, and linguistic arguments. This approach may bring some nuance into the rightly criticized multilingualism-monolingualism dichotomy—and put a question mark next to what multilingualism really is. 3

The Broader Scope of Multilingualism Studies

Generally, historical studies of multilingual coexistence have focused on the political aspects of mostly unequal, bilingual situations. Regarding the Habsburg Empire, most research concentrates on bilingual zones of conflict with the language of the local elite on one side and that of the “masses” on the other. Such analyses are inextricably connected to nationalist influences with their tradition of strongly linking nationalist endeavors to language use and juxtaposing “the language of the oppressor” to “the language of the people.” In recent years, researchers in the field of nationalism have increasingly devoted attention to what is called “national indifference” with a critical focus on analytical terminology. Influenced by criticism from scholars such as Rogers Brubaker who warn of unintentionally reproducing or reinforcing reification of nationalist terminology by uncritically implementing categories of practice as categories of analysis, research on Habsburg Central Europe has gradually shifted its attention to manifestations of non-national identification. As Pieter M. Judson puts it: If we look to sources beyond those created by the nationalists, if we dissociate ourselves rigorously from nationalist assumptions, and if we attempt to hear what we can of the experiences of the populations of these

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regions, we may perhaps liberate ourselves from the unnecessary discursive prison that nationalists around us continue to re-create.3 In his analysis of how nationalist politics forced the inhabitants of the Bohemian town of Budweis/Budějovice to adopt either a Czech or the German national identity, Jeremy King underscores this point. He also notes that for a long time, scholars of Habsburg Central Europe “have followed national leaders in regularly using the same vocabulary for nationally conscious and unconscious individuals, and thus in minimizing the distinction.”4 In this respect, he embraces Brubaker’s definition of “groupism” as a deceptive and widely applied tendency to take discrete and reified ethnic groups as the basic elements of social life, and in particular as self-evident protagonists in ethnic struggles.5 In other words, much of the scholarly work on Habsburg Central Europe simply studied ethnic groups without differentiating between nationalists and speakers of a certain language. Judson’s recent revisionist contribution to the comprehensive historiography on the Habsburg Empire is the first one of its kind to break with this tradition.6 By no longer approaching “ethnic groups” as a uniform cluster of nationalist leaders and their unanimously inspired popular disciples, the study of nationalism opens the door to the analysis of a multiplicity of dynamics. Instead of seeing the nationalist violence that plagued much of urban Austria at the turn of the century as reflecting the authentic nationalist sentiments of the majority, it may just as well be considered as the actions of the few.7 Moreover, that familiar picture of radical nationalist conflict may not be the product of budding nations battling each other or the state, but rather a conflict that pitted nationalists of all kinds against those whom they perceived as dangerously indifferent to nationhood.8 In the case of the Habsburg Monarchy, Vienna certainly influenced language politics in its territories. Susanne Czeitschner’s study of the multilingual situation within the judicial domain of Trieste shows how the Viennese 3  Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 257. 4  Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848– 1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 8–9. 5  Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004). 6  Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016). 7  Pieter M. Judson, “Nationalizing Rural Landscapes in Cisleithania, 1880–1914,” in Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe, ed. Nancy M. Wingfield (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 145. 8  Pieter M. Judson and Tara Zahra, Introduction to Austrian History Yearbook 43 (2012): 21–27.

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government tried to preserve its overall hegemonic interest in the local struggle between the Italian elites and the Slavic population by accepting the traditionally established Italian claims while simultaneously granting concessions to the Slovenian-speaking side. It illustrates how the principle of equality (introduced in 1867) granting all nationalities the right to use their language in the law courts was ignored by the local Italian elites right up to the end of the nineteenth century.9 A similar study by Jan Fellerer examines the multilingual facet of hegemony in Galicia where Ruthenians were systematically excluded from the public sphere until 1848, and demonstrates the huge discrepancies between language legislation and actual language use in Galicia after the return to constitutional principles in 1860. While Vienna tried to reinforce its power by simultaneously making linguistic concessions to the traditional Polish elite in the country, translations of legal texts into Ruthenian were provided in order to bolster the rights of this underprivileged language group. The translations, however, were mostly of symbolic value and did not contribute much to the status or actual use of Ruthenian.10 In Pilsen/Plzeň in Bohemia, the well-established system of bilingual upper secondary education slowly fell victim to legal requirements from 1867 onwards. The application of the principle of equality, which meant that no nationality could be expected to learn the language of another, successively destroyed the existing bilingual equilibrium and, as such, the application of the principle paradoxically triggered the very conflicts that it was designed to prevent. It eventually led to polarization between the city’s German and Czech speakers.11 Particularly this last example is in line with the conclusion that the multilingualism of the Habsburg Empire does not offer a positive model to be emulated in the present, since “it increasingly shifted from being constituted by subjects with diverse multilingual competences to a multilingualism constituted by the side-by-side existence of a series of monolingual communities.”12 Certainly, the way Vienna progressively yielded to ever-harsher nationalist demands led to legislation on education and electoral rights that at least attempted to 9  Susanne Czeitschner, “Discourse, Hegemony and Polyglossia in the Judicial System of Trieste in the 19th Century,” in Diglossia and Power: Language Policies and Practice in the 19th Century Habsburg Empire, ed. Rosita Rindler Schjerve (Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2008), 69–106. 10  Jan Fellerer, Discourse and Hegemony: The Case of the Ukrainian Language in Galicia under Austrian Rule, in Diglossia and Power, ed. Rindler Schjerve, 107–66. 11  Stefan Michael Newerkla, The Seamy Side of the Habsburgs’ Liberal Language Policy: Intended and Factual Reality of Language Use in Plzeň’s Educational System, in Rindler Schjerve, Diglossia and Power, 167–98. 12  Yasemin Yildiz, Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), 30.

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create parallel monolingual systems. In cases such as those mentioned above, the considered material stems mostly from written judicial and educational sources, and may very well be pointing in the direction indicated here. Yet, apart from the fact that most legislative measures were introduced during the last years of the existence of the empire and therefore cannot be judged on their possible long-term effects, there are no sufficient indications that those measures had the same profound effect on everyday language use. It matters therefore to look at the interlingual situation, and, without paying too much attention to the nationalist agendas of the time, to take a closer look at the myth of Bukovinian multilingualism and the spread of languages in Bukovina. Both contemporary and post-factum Bukovinian historiography have largely followed the path of competing nationalisms that dominated the political discourse of the time. Multilingualism as such has not been researched and has so far been merely touched upon, as a positive element by authors yearning for the multicultural Habsburg days, and as a threat by those still defending a (Romanian or Ukrainian) nationalist agenda. Also, recent historiographical publications mostly continue to take a “groupist” approach and thus remain stuck in the “unnecessary discursive prison” identified by Judson. 4

Multilingualism in Habsburg Bukovina: a Rural-Urban Divide

Bukovina had been part of a much larger Galicia from the time it became part of Austria. The aftermath of the 1848 revolutions accelerated the process of Bukovina’s split from Galicia and eventually led it to assume the status of an independent crown land. Immigration continued and urbanization took root, especially in Czernowitz, and to a lesser extent in the towns of Suczawa (Suceava) and Radautz (Rădăuți/Radivtsi). Mostly German-oriented Jews helped to develop the rural areas. Indeed, the Jewish physician, pharmacist, lawyer, and so on played a pivotal role in the modernization of small-town Bukovina.13 In 1912, the Bukovinian-Romanian nationalist newspaper Viaţa Nouă (New Life) complained that there was no such thing in Suczawa as a vibrant Romanian social life and that families and social classes lived too isolated from each other but that, by contrast, “almost only the Jews had a true social life, lively and organic.”14 According to Jewish resident Lydia Harnik, even a 13  Hannes Hofbauer and Viorel Roman, Bukowina, Bessarabien, Moldawien: Vergessenes Land zwischen Westeuropa, Russland und der Türkei (Vienna: Promedia, 1997), 35. 14  “Aice viaţa socială adevărată, vie, organică au aproape numai Jidanii.” “Din Suceava— Corespondenţe” [From Suceava—Letters from readers], Viaţa Nouă, 2 March 1912, 2.

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town as provincial as Sereth (Siret) had “a distinct intellectual character” (eine ausgesprochen geistige Prägung).15 Her friend Rosa Zuckermann witnessed a similar development in Wiznitz (Vyzhnytsia), where she knew “people who had studied, even abroad.”16 Mass immigration to Bukovina deepened the divide between “metropolitan” and “indigenous” culture. Only when political nationalism started to dominate the regional discourse, Vienna-oriented metropolitans became “Germans” and “Jews,” and the indigenous, “Romanians” and “Ruthenians.” These four groups were the largest in Bukovina (next to smaller groups of Lippovans, Magyars, Armenians, Poles, and others) and were represented in Bukovinian politics on specific national lists. In 1893, Marie Mischler, wife of a professor at Czernowitz University, addressed one of the most notable features of Austrian Bukovina— the gap between rural and urban communities, not only in terms of development, but also in terms of ethnic composure. She noted that the majority of the rural population, Romanians and Ruthenians, were underrepresented in towns and cities where Germans, Poles, and Jews constituted the majority. In spite of the fact that the countryside grappled with overpopulation, migration to the urban centers failed to materialize and urban growth in Bukovina was due exclusively to immigration from beyond its borders. The countryside and cities showed an unbalanced growth: in the first century after Austrian occupation, the urban population grew tenfold, while the rural only threefold.17 German-language colonists showed little interest in social mobility and city life and, in spite of the bleak economic situation, were not inclined to leave their villages.18 In her memoirs, Gudrun Windisch from the village of Molodia recounted how German colonists often had only limited contact with their Romanian- and Ruthenian-speaking employees, and that weddings and funerals were attended according to ethnicity.19 Adolf Katzenbeisser, who was born in the village of Czudyn, confirmed that in his village Germans kept their distance from Romanian-speaking villagers and from Jews, but also maintained 15  Albert Lichtblau, Als hätten wir dazugehört (Vienna: Böhlau, 1999), 262–3. 16  Gaby Coldewey et al., eds., “Czernowitz is gewen an alte, jidische Schtot …” Jüdische Überlebende berichten (Berlin: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, 1999), 18. 17  Mischler, Soziale Skizzen, 3–5; See also Heinrich Stiehler, “Der junge Celan und die Sprachen der Bukowina und Rumäniens,” in An der Zeiten Ränder: Czernowitz und die Bukowina: Geschichte, Literatur, Verfolgung, Exil, ed. Cécile Cordon and Helmut Kusdat (Vienna: Theodor Kramer Gesellschaft, 2002), 116. 18  Mischler, Soziale Skizzen, 5. 19  Gudrun Windisch, Molodia: Chronik eines Dorfes in der Bukowina (Augsburg: Gudrun Windisch & Landsmannschaft der Buchenlanddeutschen, 2006), 93.

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that marriages between members of these different groups were no exception.20 Philipp Menczel observed that German- and Romanian-speaking communities easily merged and that their settlements “contrasted favorably” with those consisting purely of Romanian speakers, and even more with those exclusively inhabited by Ruthenian speakers. Moreover, Menczel stated that in contrast to mixed Romanian-German-speaking communities, there were no RuthenianGerman-speaking localities.21 Ion Nistor’s ethnographic map of Bukovina,22 based on the (admittedly inadequate) 1910 census results, confirms this assessment. Then again, at least one other source states that “the Germans, the Jews, and others were usually able to speak Ukrainian or Romanian in their regions of settlement, in the north or south, respectively.”23 Habsburg era authors distinguished between what they considered “real Germans”—the countryside colonists—and city dwellers whose Germanness “regrettably dwindled away” and who spoke “two, three, or even four languages.”24 The town of Radautz was characterized as an exception and a real “German town” by several sources. Bukovinian-Romanian folklorist Ion Sbiera contradicts this statement, however, and insists in his memoires that the town had been “completely Romanian” when he went to school there in 1845: even Jews and Germans were said to have communicated in Romanian.25 Contradictory assessments aside, the overall picture is that of a sharp division between a cosmopolitan urban scene supported mainly by migration 20  Adolf Katzenbeisser, Geboren in der Bukowina: Geschichte eines Lebens: Geschichte einer Zeit (Vienna: A. Katzenbeisser, 1993), 33. 21  Philipp Menczel, Trügerische Lösungen. Erlebnisse u. Betrachtungen eines Österreichers (Stuttgart; Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1932), 34. Menczel most likely referred to more or less exclusive, bilingual communities. As a previous example from the village of Hliboka illustrates, there were obviously settlements in which both German and Ruthenian speakers formed part of a larger, multilingual community. 22  Ion Nistor, Harta etnografică a Bucovinei întocmită pe temeiul recensământului oficial din 1910 [Ethnographic map of Bukovina composed on the basis of the official census of 1910] (Bucharest: Göbl-Rasidescu, 1910). 23  Theodore B. Ciuciura and Roman Nahrebecky, “The Role of German Language and German Community in the Multi-Lingual Austrian Kronland of Bukovina (1775–1918),” Jahrbuch der Ukrainekunde (1982): 94. 24  Ibid., 6. 25  See for instance Mischler, Soziale Skizzen, 9; British Foreign Office, Bukovina Handbook Prepared under the Direction of the Historical Section of the British Foreign Office (London: Fox, 1919), accessed via Yizkor Book Project, www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/ bukovina/Bukovina.html (accessed 23 November 2016); Ion G. Sbiera, Familiea Sbiera, după tradiţiune şi istorie—Amintiri din viaţa autorului [The Sbiera family, by tradition and history—Memories from the life of the author] (Czernowitz: Eckhardt, 1899), 92.

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from outside of Bukovina and a rural area where the intermingling of language groups differed profoundly from village to village. 5

Smaller Language Groups in Bukovina

The smallest language communities in Bukovina largely shared the isolated nature of German-language colonists. The five Hungarian-speaking villages, located closely together north of Suczawa, kept to themselves, but their proximity to the equally Roman Catholic German villages, which shared religious holidays, encouraged closer contact. Although they remained Hungarianspeaking, the language they used was highly influenced by the other crown land languages, as will be demonstrated below.26 The Polish-speaking community in Bukovina was small, although its number expanded in Czernowitz during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Since it had been one of the official languages of public communication of the pre-Habsburg Moldavian Principality, it continued to be held in high esteem by the upper classes of Czernowitz. A uniquely Bukovinian phenomenon were the so-called “ArmenoPoles,” families of Armenian descent that had come to Bukovina during the pre-Habsburg days and had felt closer to Polish Catholicism than to Moldavian Orthodoxy and consequently had adopted the Polish language and culture.27 Only the small communities of Lippovans, or Old Believers, spoke Russian in Bukovina. Many of them had fled the repression of Czarist Russia well before the onset of Austrian rule and had been granted religious freedom as well as an exemption from compulsory military service by Joseph II in 1783. These privileges, in time, encouraged new groups of Lippovan settlers to come to Bukovina. Lippovans were said to speak no German whatsoever.28 26  Tibor Csupor, Mikor Csíkból elindultam—a bukovinai székelyek élettörténete [When I left Csík—The life history of the Bukovinian Szeklers] (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1987), 85; János László, A Bukovinában élő (élt) magyarság és kirajzásainak története 1762től 1914-ig, az első világháború kitöréséig [Hungarians in Bukovina then and now, from 1762 to 1914, until the outbreak of the First World War—History and outlines] (ClujNapoca: Kriterion, 2005), 61. See also Anna Pawlitschek, Ob ich dich liebe. Roman aus dem Kleinstadtleben der Bukowina (Vienna: Konegen, 1897), 53: “Ungarische Gepäckträger, die ausser ihre Muttersprache nur noch rumänisch verstanden [Hungarian baggage porters, who, apart from their mother tongue, only understood Romanian].” 27  Kazimierz Feleszko, “Die Polen in Czernowitz”, in Czernowitz. Die Geschichte einer ungewöhnlichen Stadt, ed. Harald Heppner (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000), 132–8; “Interessante Geständnisse/ Die Polen in der Bukowina”, Bukowinaer Rundschau, 22 January 1893, 3. 28  Dimitrie Dan, Die Lippowaner in der Bukowina (Czernowitz: Morariu-Andriewicz, 1890), 12–23; Axinia Crasovschi, “Russian Old Believers (Lipovans) in Romania: Cultural Values and Symbols,” N.E.C. Yearbook (2001–2002): 15–59.

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Yiddish held a special position. First, the Austrian authorities refused to recognize it as a separate language, and second, it had been the language of communication initially only in the mostly rural, Hasidic Jewish communities. Yiddish activist Nathan Birnbaum declared in 1910 that the official reason given for why Yiddish could not be spoken at public meetings—the police allegedly would not be able to understand what was said—was inaccurate, “since all inhabitants of Bukovina spoke better Yiddish than the Jewish leaders, because Bukovinian German was basically bad Yiddish.”29 Such mixing of German and Yiddish was mentioned more often: poet Rose Ausländer (1901–1988) recalled how Jewish parents assured that their offspring did not bring Yiddish elements into their German ( jiddeln).30 Then again, by 1912, Yiddishist Max Diamant contradicted Birnbaum’s statement when, after the registration of Yiddish as a native language was refused, he called it outrageous that students whose mothers hardly spoke any German were obliged to indicate this language as their “mother tongue,” claiming that the authorities thus forced students to submit incorrect data.31 In a nutshell, Yiddish distinguished itself in Bukovina from the other smaller language groups by its ubiquity in rural areas, whereas Hungarian and Russian in particular were confined to isolated communities.

29  “Die Argumentation der k.k. Polizeidirektion, dass die Beamten nicht jüdisch verstehen, ist eine unrichtige, weil alle Bewohner der Bukowina besser jüdisch sprechen als die jüdischen Führer. Schliesslich ist ja das Bukowinaer Deutsch ein schlechtes Jüdisch.” Samuel Hammer, Abschrift der Relation über den Verlauf der von Dr. Max Diamant für den 6. März um 6 Uhr abends im Saale des kaufm. Hauses mit der Tagesordnung ‘Das Verbot des Gebrauches der jüdischen Sprache in Versammlungen’ abgehaltenen jüdischen Volksversammlung [Transcription of Jewish convention by physician Dr. Max Diamant ‘The prohibition of the use of the Jewish language in meetings’ on the 6th of March at 6 pm in the hall of the commercial house], ad Präs.Zl. 1483 ex 1910, 6 March 1910/ Romanian National Archives, Fond “Guvernământul Bucovinei,” MI 69/10. Similar reasoning regarding the Jews was applied later by Rudolf Wagner, Die Bukowina und ihre Deutschen (Vienna: Österreichische Landsmannschaft, 1979), 17: “Da sie sich fast ausnahmslos der deutschen Sprache und des ‘jiddischen,’ eines mittelalterlichen deutschen Dialekts, bedienten, wurden sie, meistens gegen ihren Willen, in österreichischer Zeit bei Volkszählungen den Deutschen zugerechnet.” 30  Edith Silbermann, “Deutsch—die Muttersprache der meisten Bukowiner Juden”, in Cordon and Kusdat, An der Zeiten Ränder, 40. 31  See for instance Pawlitschek, Ob ich dich liebe, 57 (on “the Jew”): “Nur in seltenen Fällen kutschiert er selbst, dazu hat er deutsche oder rumänische Burschen im Dienst, die aber im deutsch-jüdischen Jargon mit ihm sprechen”; Max Diamant, Rekurs gegen das Diziplinarerkenntniss des akademischen Senates Czernowitz vom 15/3 1912, Zl. 596, Zl. 720, Czernowitz, 1912/ Romanian National Archives, Fond “Guvernământul Bucovinei,” MCȊ XCIII/8.

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Fluent in All Three Official Languages of Public Communication?

As stated, the assertion that the general population of Bukovina spoke three languages or more may be unrealistic. A case in point is the matter of Bukovina’s three official languages of public communication, German, Romanian, and Ruthenian. Next to German, of which the leading strata of the crown land had an excellent command and which Governor Leopold von Göetz characterized in 1896 as “a perfectly neutral medium of communication,” Romanian and Ruthenian were equally admitted as customary languages of debate in the regional diet. This was primarily important in the early years of autonomy in order to enable illiterate Romanian- and Ruthenian-speaking monolingual peasant deputies to address the house.32 The executive committee of the diet communicated in German, but used Romanian and Ruthenian in its correspondence with small-town municipalities or political parties.33 In later years, the matter of official diet and administrative languages had a more symbolical value, since the use of German posed no problem whatsoever for Bukovinian politicians. Moreover, it made time-consuming translations redundant. Initially, it had been the central government’s intention to appoint to regional administration jobs only those natives with a command of all three crown land official languages of public communication. This had soon proved to be too ambitious: as early as 1864, the regional diet had to admit it could not even find staff with these qualifications to fill its own ranks, since Romanian and Ruthenian speakers in general mastered only German next to their respective native language.34 Even as late as 1907, a Romanian nationalist daily complained that for non-Bukovinian officials knowledge of only German 32  Ciuciura and Nahrebecky, The Role of German Language, 94–5. 33  Wolfdieter Bihl, “Die Ruthenen”, in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. 3/1, Die Völker des Reiches, ed. Peter Urbanitsch and Adam Wandruszka (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1973), 570. 34  “Es ist in der That die Schwierigkeit, daß die Beamten sämmtlicher Landessprachen, wenigstens der 3 Hauptsprachen, der romanischen, ruthenischen und deutschen in Wort und Schrift mächtig sind, in der gegenwärtigen Uebergangsperiode eine sehr große, denn es ist selbst dem Landesauschusse bei der geringen Zahl von Beamten, die er hat, nicht gelungen, Beamte anzustellen, die sämmtlicher Landessprachen in Wort und Schrift mächtig sind, indem auch die Eingeborenen in der Regel nur der moldauischen und der deutschen, oder der ruthenischen und der deutschen Sprache in Wort und Schrift mächtig sind, so daß die dritte Landessprache die Schwierigkeit bildet.” Bukowinaer Landtag, Stenographisches Protokoll der dreiundzwanzigsten Sitzung der III. Session des Bukowinaer Landtages am 13. Mai 1864, Stenografische Protokolle des Bukowinaer Landtags für die dritte Session (Czernowitz: Eckhardt, 1864), 368.

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sufficed, while native Bukovinians were expected to master all three official languages.35 The problem was not confined to the regional administration alone. Similar difficulties could be found in the military: The bicentennial of its home regiment on 25 April 1901 was reason for extensive, patriotic celebrations in Czernowitz. The specific nature of multilingual Bukovina required creative solutions in order to make the event a success. Practicality prevailed: The nature of such an anniversary celebration calls for the most outstanding military feats of the Regiment and its heroes to be presented to the troops. Such a representation must be made with oratorical verve in the mother tongues of the men, clearly audible to each and every one of them and free from disturbing influences, which is completely unfeasible in front of such a large number of troops with its multitude of languages. It seemed most appropriate to transfer that presentation to the houses of worship and entrust to the clergy to devote a homily to the glorious deeds of the Regiment after a solemn mass.36 As such, the services in the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as in the synagogue, were held in German, in the Uniate church in Ruthenian, and in the Orthodox Cathedral in both Romanian and Ruthenian.37 As late as 1919, when the Empire had ceased to exist and Romanian Minister Iancu Flondor gathered the political leaders of pre-war Bukovina to discuss future arrangements, their meeting had to be conducted in German.38 A good command of

35  Editorial, Apărarea Naţională, 1 December 1907, 2. 36  “Es liegt, im Wesen einer solchen Jubiläumsfeier, daß der Mannschaft die hervorragendsten Waffentaten des Regiments und seiner Helden vorgeführt werden; eine solche Darstellung muß in der Muttersprache des Mannes, mit oratorischem Schwunge, jedem einzelnen, vernehmlich und frei von störenden Einflüßen erfolgen, was vor der ausgerückten Front eines so großen Truppenkörpers und bei seiner Vielsprachigkeit ganz unausführbar ist.    Am zweckmäßigsten schien es diese Darstellung in die Gotteshäuser zu verlegen und die Geistlichkeit damit zu betrauen, nach einem feierlichen Gottesdienst die Ruhmestaten des Regiments einer Predigt zu Grunde zu legen.” Karl Dvořák, Geschichte des k. und k. Infanterie-Regiments Erzherzog Eugen Nr. 41 bearbeitet von Karl Dvořák, k. und k. Oberst Regimentskommandant (Czernowitz: R. Eckhardts’sche kk. Universitätsbuchdruckerei, 1905), 88. 37  Ibid., 97. 38  “Eine Aktion Flondors zur Schaffung eines Beirats für die Bukowina”, Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung/Czernowitzer Tagblatt, 4 June 1919, 1.

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all three languages remained rare as hen’s teeth in Bukovinian society throughout its existence. 7

German, the Obvious Lingua Franca

German language and culture, combined with loyalty to empire and emperor, were widely seen as ideal vehicles to achieve upward social mobility.39 It enabled university graduates to pursue careers outside of the crown land, which, in view of the abundance of graduates and the scarcity of available positions, proved to be of vital importance.40 It had also helped to create a homogenous and cosmopolitan Bukovinian elite.41 Moreover, knowledge of German was status enhancing, since a number of languages (German, Polish, Italian, and Hungarian) had a higher social standing in the empire than the so-called “developing languages.”42 With its status as lingua franca of the Empire, the German language substantially increased the career prospects of its Bukovinian speakers. Together with enlightened Josephinism, German was said to have enabled Bukovina’s transition from a Moldavian border province of the Ottoman Empire into an eventual budding culture landscape.43 Although Ruthenian, Romanian, and German were all official languages of public communication of Habsburg Bukovina, German’s position as “state language” (Staatssprache) clearly distinguished it from the other two. German-language instruction was a matter of course in the Habsburg Empire. A local newspaper emphasized how German as the language of instruction transgressed national interests and had a function in Bukovina comparable with Latin.44 Austrian government officials, who were only temporarily assigned to Bukovina, mostly lacked any knowledge of Romanian and Ruthenian while, as illustrated above, educated Romanian and 39  Emanuel Turczynski, Geschichte der Bukowina in der Neuzeit: Zur Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte einer mitteleuropäisch geprägten Landschaft (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993), 172. 40  “Der Sturmlauf gegen die Universität”, Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung, 4 November 1909, 1. 41  Andrei Corbea-Hoisie, La Bucovine. Éléments d’histoire politique et culturelle [Bukovina. Elements of its political and cultural history] (Paris: Institut d’Études Slaves, 2004), 21. 42   Gerald Stourzh, “Der nationale Ausgleich in der Bukowina”, in Die Bukowina— Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed. Ilona Slawinski and Joseph P. Strelka (Bern: Peter Lang, 1995), 37. 43  Turczynski, Geschichte der Bukowina, 6. 44  “Der Sturmlauf gegen die Universität,” 1.

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Ruthenian speakers in general only mastered German next to their mother tongue. A decent general knowledge of German was therefore a prerequisite if the language was to fulfill adequately its envisaged mediating role in Bukovina. It merits therefore to take a closer look at the local population’s knowledge of German. Notwithstanding the official status of German, Ruthenian, and Romanian in the crown land, in the courts German remained dominant. In the Bukovinian Romanian nationalist newspaper Apărarea Naţională (National Defense), editor and lawyer Eusebie Antonovici scorned Romanian-language legal professionals in 1907 for using German, a practice they apparently substantiated with the argument that they were unfamiliar with Romanian legal terminology because of their German-language education. Antonovici argued that they could easily and inexpensively have acquired the necessary books in the neighbouring Kingdom of Romania.45 Similarly, in his description of life in the Hungarian colonies of Bukovina, Mihály László emphasized that “Romanian and Ruthenian officials had a better command of German than of their own respective languages.”46 If one is to believe the laments of Bukovinian Romanian nationalists, at least the Romanian-language urban upper crust acquired a good, or rather too good, command of German over the years. Women with a Romanian-speaking background regarded marrying a “foreigner” as a path toward upward social mobility, and this view was shared by many of the upper class. Boyars mostly sent their sons to Vienna to be educated, although this choice was slightly less obvious once the Francis Joseph University had been established in Czernowitz in 1875. Frustrated Romanian nationalists even dubbed German “the second mother tongue” (zweite Muttersprache) of Romanian speakers,47 and accused it of corrupting their knowledge of Romanian. Romanian speakers were said to use German not only in the streets and at social events, but even in the privacy of their own homes. Members of Romanian ladies’ associations were said to switch to German as soon as a non-Romanian woman appeared.48 Worse, Romanian ladies even chose German-language publications over Romanian ones. In 1913, Vasile Greciuc complained that in most 45  Eusebie Antonovici, editorial, Apărarea Naţională, 24 January 1907, 1. 46  Mihály László, Keleti testvéreink [Our eastern brothers] (Budapest: Franklin-Társulat, 1882), 9. 47  Ludwig Adolf Simiginowicz-Staufe, Die Völkergruppen der Bukowina (Czernowitz: Czopp, 1884), 34. 48  Anonymous, Rutenisarea Bucovinei şi causele desnaţionalisării poporului român după date autentice [The Ruthenization of Bukovina and the causes of denationalization of the Romanian people according to authentic data] (Bucharest: Minerva, 1904), 152.

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Bukovinian Romanian families, the women read German-language rather than Romanian-language periodicals. Greciuc specifically mentioned a preference for the Leipziger-Illustrierte-Zeitung and Das Buch für Alle over Luceafărul (The Morning Star) and Junimea literară (Literary Youth).49 In an article defending Bukovinian Romanian speakers’ fondness of the German language, it was highlighted that “in the homes of the nobility, the clergy, and the rest of Romanian intelligentsia, they delighted in speaking German … no matter how numerous a Romanian social circle is, its members will immediately switch to German as the language of conversation.” The German theatre in Czernowitz reportedly had been built “with large sums of money coming from Romanian hands with the Romanians frequenting it most often and most regularly.”50 The German language was synonymous with Vienna, and Vienna with social status. However, other considerations were also taken into account: even as late as 1913, Viaţa Nouă reported how a lecture on language practice in the Bukovinian administration was interrupted by “a prominent lord from the region, seduced by foreigners,” who had claimed that “Romanians did not need the Romanian language, but wanted to live in peace with the Jews and the Germans while using their respective languages.”51 Language matters stood differently with the Bukovinian peasant, who, again according to Romanian nationalists, was helpless when confronted with Austrian officialdom in the cities. The few accounts of peasant knowledge of German indicate little language competency development throughout the period of Bukovinian autonomy within the empire. Most village children first became acquainted with German in school. Folklorist Ion Sbiera recalled how, being used to speaking only Romanian in his native village, he was thrown into the deep end when in 1845 he went to school in nearby Radautz and was addressed only in German.52 The Bukovinian Romanian nationalist press wished for all “foreigners” to speak Romanian, so that “the poor peasant” could 49  Vasile Greciuc, Cultura românească în Bucovina [Romanian culture in Bukovina] (Czernowitz: Societatea tipografică bucovineană, 1913), 30. 50  “Die Bukowiner Romänen und das Deutschtum”, Bukowinaer Rundschau, 27 December 1892, 1. 51  “… ȋntâmplat la conferinţa d-lui advocat Dr. A. Comoroşan, ţinută ȋn 15 l. c. ȋn Storojineţ ĭn chestia limbei la judecătorii şi oficii din ţară, la care un roman, gospodar fruntaş din ȋmprejurime, sedus de străini, a strigat conferenţiarului că ‘Românilor nu le trebue limbă română, ci voesc să trăiască ȋn pace cu ovreii şi germanii folosindu-se de limba lor.’” “Un roman contra limbei româneşti?” [A Romanian against the Romanian language?], Viaţa Nouă, 16/19 November 1913, 9. 52  Sbiera, Familiea Sbiera, 93.

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communicate with the “chancery gentlemen” in the “peasant’s language” (limba ţăranului).53 “When [the peasant] wants some information,” an author in the Bukowinaer Journal had complained in 1901, “it is not granted in most cases, most likely because the acting official does not understand his language. When he wants to pay his taxes at the cash register, the ‘monolingual’ official cannot even tell him how much he has to pay.”54 This argumentation naturally suited the Romanian nationalist agenda well, but it also must have had some truth in it in order to resonate with its audience. When a Romanian secondary school (Gymnasium) was founded in Kimpolung (Câmpulung) in 1907, the local press welcomed its establishment, but deplored the decision to ban German from its curriculum, since such a measure would limit the possibilities for ambitious Romanian speakers. Next to their mother tongue, the students should learn German, “and to be sure, a competent, reliable exportable German, not this half-German, which only corrupted their own language without becoming something decent in its own right.”55 This statement indicates that there was some proficiency in the German language present, although its level—a matter of debate in itself, as will be addressed in this section—was dubious. Multilingualism thus seemed to be absent at both sides of the counter. One can easily imagine that nationalist periodicals had political reasons to exaggerate limited peasant knowledge of German, but this did not always seem to be the case: in 1915 for instance, Ruthenian nationalists proudly reported how German speaking soldiers had been pleasantly surprised by the good command of the German language they had found among the local (Ruthenianspeaking) population of Bukovina. When asked how they spoke the language so well, children dressed in “village attire” (v sil'skij odeži) told the soldiers that they had learned German in secondary school and at the seminary.56 If this sole example can be considered illustrative for the development of German language knowledge over time, the tentative conclusion may be drawn that the German communication skills of initially non-German-speaking schoolchildren gradually improved. As stated, the level of German knowledge in Bukovina was, to some, a point of concern. In contrast to the urban elite with its proximity to German culture and often a Viennese education, the quality of German language education 53  “Mea culpa,” Apărarea Naţională, 22 December 1907, 3. 54  Editorial, Bukowinaer Journal, 12 December 1901, 1. 55  “Unsere Jungen”, Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 July 1907, 1. 56  “Ščo hovoriat' pro nas Nimci” [What the Germans say about us], Narodnyj Holos, 17 July 1915, 14.

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in rural Bukovina was generally perceived as low. From the late nineteenth century onward, more and more local teachers of German were of Bukovinian descent themselves. A result of this development was, as a newspaper complained, that the quality of German language skills experienced an alarming decline and had deteriorated into “a bookish German acquired with difficulty by foreign-language teachers,” one that was feared to “gradually degenerate and eventually stagnate without a live source.” On the other hand, the prominent Bukovinian Germanist Ludwig Adolf Simiginowicz-Staufe maintained that the language had developed one-on-one with written German since the different origins of the early German settlers had caused dialectal variety to disappear.57 In any case, a specific brand of Bukovinian German language developed its own dialectal peculiarities and thus convincingly proved its viability in the crown land. The board of the Bukovinian branch of the General German Language Association (Vorstand des Bukowiner Zweiges des Allgemeinen deutschen Sprachvereins), which aimed to promote German language purity, definitely did not regard colloquial Bukovinian German as a suitable “live source.” It published a brochure on Bukovinian German in 1901 that explained how German owed its position in Bukovina to the Austrian state rather than to its small German-language minority and should therefore be considered “a mixed language,” a “stranger’s German” (Mischsprache, Fremdendeutsch), while Jews among themselves resorted to a “Jewish German” (Judendeutsch) incomprehensible to other German speakers. The title of the brochure, Bukowiner Deutsch. Fehler und Eigenthümlichkeiten in der deutschen Verkehrsund Schriftsprache der Bukowina reveals that its authors had little patience with dialectal diversity. Originating from an 1892 Viennese school conference, where the suggestion was made to compile a dialect dictionary for each Austrian crown land, the brochure was meant to ensure that every Bukovinian German speaker would know how to distinguish “good” Austrian German from his own dialect in order not to be considered a “Slav” from outside of the crown land. Simultaneously, it aimed to protect families of German-speaking officials and teachers from “Bukovinian speech defects.”58 Domestic servants in particular were blamed for the introduction of words from other languages into Bukovinian German, a phenomenon deemed “unpleasant” to the

57  “Dies und das (Briefe in die Sommerfrische)—VI,” Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung, 11 August 1910, 1; Simiginowicz-Staufe, Die Völkergruppen, 167. 58  Theodor Gartner et al., Bukowiner Deutsch. Fehler und Eigenthümlichkeiten in der deutschen Verkehrs- und Schriftsprache der Bukowina (Vienna: Schulbücher-Verlag, 1901), v–vi.

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non-Bukovinian German ear.59 In a review of the brochure, Max Reiner found it a very useful manual for Bukovinian schools and expected the authorities to introduce it into the official curriculum.60 Whether such an introduction eventually occurred or not, the local situation appears to have remained as before. In 1914, Heinrich Kipper still wholeheartedly recommended the brochure to his fellow Bukovinians and expressed his hope that a revised edition would be printed.61 Thus, unsurprisingly, a discrepancy surfaced in the development of German language knowledge within different social classes throughout the years of Bukovinian crown land autonomy. Whereas the higher classes eagerly embraced standard German and took pride in their fluency, lower-class Bukovinians often acquired only a basic level of German, riddled with local influences. As will be addressed in the following, this last type of language evolution would not remain limited to German. 8

“Native Languages”: Romanian and Ruthenian

Not only the level at which Romanian and Ruthenian native speakers mastered German deserves attention here, but also the extent to which bilingual Romanian-Ruthenian speakers were a common or less common feature. It was mainly in Romanian nationalist circles around 1900 that, with the intensification of nationalist bickering and its obvious linguistic component, there were growing worries about the way the Romanian rural population tended to adopt the language of their Ruthenian-speaking neighbors. As such, linguistic adoption was not regarded as a feature of the Romanian-speaking elites exclusively. Quite unlike the case of elites with an alleged preference for German, lower-class Romanian-speaking Bukovinians—as was claimed by Romanian nationalists—were targets for Ruthenian rather than German “manipulation.” Many Romanian- as well as Ruthenian-speaking peasants belonged to the Orthodox Church, and this affiliation naturally encouraged linguistically mixed marriages and other forms of social integration. The fact that Romanian speakers were more likely to adopt to Ruthenian than the other way around was attributed to Romanian carelessness, fondness of learning new languages, the “simplicity of the Ruthenian language,” and the stubbornness or even 59  Ibid., 17. 60  Max Reiner, “Bukowiner Deutsch—Schluß”, Bukowinaer Post, 25 July 1901, 1–3. 61  Heinrich Kipper, “Bukowiner Deutsch”, Bukowinaer Nachrichten—Organ des ‘Deutschen Volksbundes in der Bukowina,’ 1 March 1914, 1 and 3.

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stupidity of Ruthenian speakers.62 Romanian nationalists were not the only ones to notice such adoption. In 1904, the linguist Gustav Weigand commented that in general, Romanian speakers were said to be “easily Slavicized” and in mixed villages all of them spoke good Ruthenian.63 Since language was the main—and one may argue, the only—distinguishing mark within the Bukovinian Orthodox community, it became a hot topic once the attention of quarrelling Romanian and Ruthenian nationalists turned to the question of who was to dominate the powerful and rich Bukovinian Orthodox Metropolis. Whereas Romanian had been the traditional language of worship, many Ruthenian attempts to disqualify “Romanizing” village priests were concentrated on their alleged lack of Ruthenian language skills. Some colorful examples in this respect are provided by the Ruthenian Sylvester Dashkyevych, who published his Die Lage der gr. -or. Ruthenen in der Bukowinaer Erzdiöcese in 1891 in response to Romanian nationalist publications by Metropolitan Silvestru Morariu-Andrievici. The fact that Dashkyevych wrote in German and gave his Ruthenian examples in Polish orthography with a (not always correct) German translation makes it challenging to present them in this text. However, since the examples provide a unique peek into the language practices of the time, two of them are highlighted: “Wyzlizła Isus na horu i stala rykaty”—“Jesus crawled [feminine verb conjugation] on the mountain and started to roar”; “Prynesy caruța, budu pojichatu na îngropaciune”— “Bring the căruță [Romanian: cart], and I will be brought to the îngropaciune [Romanian: funeral].”64 Apart from ramshackle grammar, sometimes leading to hilarious results, Romanian words seem to have been easily incorporated into Ruthenian. 62  Ion Nistor, Istoria Bucovinei (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1991), 22; Deşteptarea, 15, October 1893, 153; “Reviste literare romȋneştĭ,” Voinţa Poporului, 15 January 1905, 5. 63  “Überhaupt ist zu beobachten, daß die Rumänen dieser Gegend sich sehr leicht slavisieren. In den gemischten Gemeinden sprechen sie alle gut Ruthenisch, selbst da wo sie bei weitem in der Mehrzahl sind, und obgleich die Geistlichkeit sowohl wie die Schule durchweg für das Rumänische arbeitet.” Gustav Weigand, Die Dialekte der Bukowina und Bessarabiens: Mit einem Titelbilde und Musikbeilagen (Leipzig: Barth, 1904), 15. 64  Silvester Daszkiewicz, Die Lage der gr. -or. Ruthenen in der Bukowinaer Erzdiöcese: zugleich Antwort auf die ‘Apologien’ des Bukowinaer gr.-or. Metropoliten Silvester MorariuAndriewicz (Czernowitz: 1891), 65. In his zeal to demonstrate the incorrect use of the Ruthenian language by Romanian-speaking priests, Dashkevych went further than necessary. His German translations show the absence of articles, incorrect in German, but logical in Ruthenian, and, in the case of the second example, also in Romanian: “Wyzlizła Isus na horu i stala rykaty” (“Die Jesus kroch auf Berg und begann zu brüllen!”); “Prynesy caruța, budu pojichatu na îngropaciune”; (“Trage caruța [romänisch Wagen] herbei, und ich werde gefahren auf îngropaciune [romänisch Begräbnis]”).

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In 1904, Governor Konrad Hohenlohe provided the Bukovinian regional diet with interesting figures. While admitting that a number of Ruthenianlanguage parishes were still served by Romanian-speaking priests, he affirmed that “seventy-five percent of them were more than completely proficient in the Ruthenian language, [and] more than twenty-one percent were so to a lesser extent, but still well enough to comply with their professional responsibilities in church and in school” and concluded that “more than ninety-seven percent of the priests of Romanian nationality working in Ruthenian communities met the language requirements.”65 In 1907, his successor Oktavian Regner-Bleyleben wrote to the Ministry for Religion and Education that in all mixed-language communities in the crown land the priests were Romanianspeaking, but that with a few exceptions all parishioners were bilingual. Both the mass and sermon were held in Romanian, while “the parishioners mostly agreed with this practice and did not want changes in this respect,” and “objections were raised almost exclusively by nationally conscious elements from outside.”66 Other sources confirm that Romanian native speakers were sent as priests to Ruthenian-speaking communities as well as the other way around. Their apparent poor command of the language of their flock was often the butt of local jokes.67 The mere existence of such jokes underlines both the existence and the sometimes deficient quality of Romanian-Ruthenian bilingualism in the villages. In one case from 1911, however, a hundred inhabitants of the village of Korczestie complained that their priest only knew Romanian. According to the plaintiffs, a letter sent to this priest returned unread with the instruction either to write in German or to provide a German translation.68 Therefore, in matters of the Orthodox Church, multilingualism—or rather bilingualism—seems to have functioned adequately. In situations where 65  “Aus dem Bukowiner Landtage”, Czernowitzer Zeitung, 6 January 1904, 1. 66  “Die Pfarrlinge sind aber mit dieser Gepflogenheit … meistens einverstanden und wird von denselben eine Aenderung in dieser Hinsicht nicht gewünscht. Ein Widerspruch dagegen wird fast nur von Seiten aussenstehender national bewusster Elemente erhoben.” Landespräsident, Bericht and das k.k. Ministerium für Kultus und Unterricht, Zl. 2419 Präs, June 26, 1907, p. 9/ Romanian National Archives, Fond “Guvenământul Bucovinei,” MCÎ, CXXIII/10. 67  For indications of Romanian spoken by Ruthenian native-speaking priests, see Anonymous, Die gr.-or. Kirchenfrage in der Bukowina und die Jungruthenen—Kritische Beleuchtung der Brochure: “Beitrag zur kirchlichen Frage in der Bukowina. Zwei zeitgemäße Artikel vom Reichsratsabgeordneten Hierotheus Pihuliak und einem gr.-or. ruthenischen Priester” (Czernowitz: Bukowinaer Vereinsdruckerei, 1906), 25–6; for more concrete examples of broken Ruthenian spoken by Romanian native-speaking priests, see Daszkiewicz, Die Lage der gr. -or. Ruthenen, 64–5. 68  “Otverte pys’mo…” [Public letter], Narodnyj Holos, 10 November 1911, 1–3.

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Ruthenian and Romanian languages met within communities with a shared religion, language practices were easily adopted or combined, whereas priests usually had a decent command of their parishioners’ first language, in spite of frantic nationalist attempts to prove the opposite. 9

Indifference to Language?

The usage of terminology such as “a decent command” brings the analysis of multilingualism in Bukovina into murky waters: if Bukovinians spoke all these languages, how well did they actually master them? And, as has been shown in the example of the struggling priests in Ruthenian-speaking parishes, could cases of language transfer—or cross-linguistic interference—have been the norm rather than the exception? In the brochure on Bukovinian German mentioned above there were complaints about the level of German in Bukovina in general. In 1914, Heinrich Kipper was more specific when he discussed the “Bukovinisms” that he found in everyday German: he stated that most of them came from Yiddish or Slavic languages, and he provided a number of examples.69 German, with its dominant position as the lingua franca of the crown land, might have been a prime target for linguistic interference, but there are strong indications that the phenomenon affected all languages spoken in Bukovina. A Hungarian source affirms that, in spite of the isolated nature of the Hungarian villages in Bukovina, spoken Hungarian was full of Romanian influences. Here, too, ample examples are given that show how the interference in these cases went much further than the occasional loanword. Romanian nouns formed the base for newly formed Hungarian verbs, and Romanian case endings and expressions found their way into local Hungarian.70 Even the proudest inhabitants of the village of Istensegíts, meaning “God help us” in Hungarian, were said to have adopted the village’s old Romanian name (Ţibeni), calling 69  Kipper, Bukowiner Deutsch, 1: “… die vielen Bukowinismen, über die meist dem jüdischen Jargon und dem Slawischen entlehnten oder nachgebildeten Formen, die aber mit der Zeit ungewollt selber Ausdrücke und Formen anwenden wie ‘Ahi,’ ‘tati’, ‘er braucht ein Heft haben,’ ‘gib her das Geld,’ ‘sie hat sich mit ihm geküßt,’ ‘er ist größer von mir,’ ‘kommts herein’ usw.” 70  Háj [Romanian ‘hai,’ instead of Hungarian ‘gyere’ -come-] szogore [Rom. vocative ending -e added], ke [cf. Rom. ‘că,’ instead of Hung. ‘hogy’ -for-] jön az eső = Come, brother-in-law, for it is going to rain.    A gajina [cf. Rom. ‘găină,’ instead of Hung. ‘tyúk’ -chicken-] megvovált [Hung. verb ‘vovál’ -lay eggs- cf. Rom. ‘ouă’ -egg- instead of Hung. ‘toj’ -lay eggs-] a karucában [cf. Rom. ‘căruţă’ instead of Hung. ‘szekér’ -cart-] = The chicken laid eggs in the cart.

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it Cibény. Ruthenian borrowings were less frequent but existed nevertheless. Since most craftsmen were German native speakers, German borrowings could be found in the respective semantic fields, as well as in horsemanship terms, like “curukk” (suggesting the German zurück).71 A clearly antisemitic sketch from the Romanian nationalist newspaper Deşteptarea (Awakening) indicates that Romanian was also subject to local adjustments: a fictional Jewish man is quoted to deliver a Romanian monologue full of corrupted words, incorrect inflection, and the occasional German or Yiddish loanword.72 Even taking into consideration that this depiction aimed at ridicule, it is safe to assume that such speech was recognizable to the paper’s readers. At times, it seems, the notion of clearly distinct languages disappears altogether. Bukovinian author Anna Pawlitschek describes one of the characters in her 1897 novel as follows: When Pista came to Bukovina, being a Slovak he mastered German and Hungarian next to his mother tongue. These days he speaks neither of these languages flawlessly, but has taken to a jumble of all of them, which, on top of that, is permeated with Bukovinian idioms.73

   Belebagál [cf. Rom. ‘a băga’ -enter, bring into-] frikát [cf. Rom. frică -fear-] - from Rom. ‘a băga (somebody -dat.-) frica în oase,’ lit.: ‘to bring fear into somebody’s bones’ = to scare somebody, instead of Hung. ‘megijesztet.’ László, A Bukovinában élő (élt) magyarság, 61. 71  Csupor, Mikor Csíkból elindultam, 85. 72  “Froim: Dimita, badi Vasili, eară cu Displitare [Deşteptarea—JD] la mună? Tare stricat dimita de când cetit displitaru cel blăstămat. Lasă dracului displitare, pentru chi ea face la dimita sânge rĕu pi jȋdov şi jȋdov nu di vină aşa cum spune gazeta vostru … Ce visezi dimita, bade Vasile, ş ice creḑi că voi tĕrani ȋntrat amu ȋn altă lume mai bun de chind cetit displitari şi di chind făcut acolo ferain acela cum ḑiciţi voi Uniri? Ştii ce, badi Vasili? Eu vreu sĕ scriu pi mine la soceitati vostru di cetiri! …”/ “Mr. Vasile, again with Deşteptarea [“The Awakening,” a Romanian nationalist newspaper in Bukovina] in your hand? You’re always so cross after reading that cursed Deşteptarea. Let that stupid Deşteptarea be, for it makes you all upset about the Jews and they are not to blame like your newspaper claims … What are you dreaming, Mr. Vasile, do you believe you farmers have entered a better world since you read Deşteptarea and since you have established that association, what do you call it, ‘Unirea’ [“Unification,” a Romanian association in Bukovina—JD]? You know what, Mr. Vasile? I want to sign up for your reading association, too! …” “Froim şi Vasile” [Froim and Vasile], Deşteptarea, 1–13 February 1896, 23–4. 73  “Pista war, als er in die Bukowina kam, als Slovak des Deutschen und Ungarischen nebst seiner Muttersprache mächtig. Nunmehr kann er keine dieser Sprachen richtig, sondern er hat sich einen Mischmasch angewöhnt, der auch noch von den bukowiner Idiomen durchdrungen wird.” Pawlitschek, Ob ich dich liebe, 146.

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Zooming out to the level of nationalism and indifference towards it merits the inclusion of language in the equation. Language has always been a central element in nationalist discourse, first and foremost as an inalienable part of national identification, always presented as in peril of being replaced, abolished, or at the very least of being discriminated against. Language standardization, modernization, and vocabulary extension were the traditional academic instruments to prepare “undeveloped” languages for their future responsibilities in matters of popular unification and state formation. However, as can be observed in the exceptionally colorful example of Habsburg Bukovina, indifference was not limited to nationalism as such, but extended deep into one of its core elements: language. Slavic grammar found its way into German, German words entered Romanian, Romanian expressions surfaced in Bukovinian Hungarian. In looking away from the Habsburg statistics on language use and focusing on primary sources instead, the neat division of languages seems just as outdated at the neat division of nationalities. Habsburg scholars have touched upon the subject of cross-linguistic interference, but only to the lexicological level of loanwords, and so far have not gone further than to note that it deserves further study.74 10 Conclusion In summary, the alleged multilingualism of Bukovina and the assertion that its general population spoke three languages or more should be put into perspective. Mass immigration to Bukovina quickly deepened the divide between “metropolitan” and “indigenous” culture. As far as the distribution of languages is concerned, larger towns and especially Czernowitz were linguistic melting pots with a clear German-language dominance, while in the villages Romanian and Ruthenian prevailed, with Ruthenian dominance in the north and Romanian in the south. The smallest language communities showed only some linguistic integration with their close environments. Although it seems likely that many, especially in Czernowitz, were able to understand some of the other languages, and many borrowings emerged in what became “Bukovinian” German, a general knowledge of German could be found only among the learned classes in urban areas and German-speaking 74  See for instance Peter Urbanitsch, “Pluralist Myth and Nationalist Realities: The Dynastic Myth of the Habsburg Monarchy—a Futile Exercise in the Creation of Identity?” Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 136–7. Urbanitsch, however, limits himself to the phenomenon of mutual loanwords in the languages of the empire.

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colonists in the villages. Ruthenian, Romanian, and German were all official languages of public communication of Habsburg Bukovina, but its position as “state language” clearly distinguished German from the other two. Native Bukovinian German speakers largely lacked a decent command of the other local languages. Educated Romanian and Ruthenian speakers in general only mastered German next to their mother tongue—but then with much enthusiasm. Bukovinian peasants found themselves in a less favorable situation and were generally unable to communicate with representatives of the Austrian bureaucracy. German-language education in the villages in Bukovina was generally perceived to be of low quality, although this situation improved over time. In general, Orthodox priests were willing and more or less able to accommodate parishioners in their native languages, while those parishioners, when Ruthenian-speaking, regarded a Romanian-language church service as customary. To what degree parishioners actually understood what was said, however, remains unclear, especially in villages that were not bilingual. With intensified nationalist activism touching on this issue increasing only from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards, the time span of the sources available is limited. Matters of language and culture are often approached as two sides of the same coin, in phrases such as “they struggled to maintain their own language and culture.” It is worth noting—and the case of Bukovina provides an apt illustration in this respect—that these two are not necessarily congruently related: although the Bukovinian countryside was dotted with Romanian- and Ruthenian-speaking communities, they often shared their religion (Orthodox Christian), diet, customs, and folklore. Thus, even in situations where a common language was lacking, cultural values, symbols, and standards were shared. Another matter is how multilingualism itself should be perceived. So far, scholars have approached languages in the way they used to approach nationalities: as monolithic entities without internal distinctions. The exceptional case of Habsburg Bukovina with its many languages on such a small territory illustrates how, within a relatively short period of time, intense interaction could lead to a far-reaching hybridization of languages. In such cases, researchers may be advised to include interlingual dynamics in their studies of multilingualism and its actors. Most sources regarding multilingualism in Bukovina should be handled with care. With language as the most prominent weapon in the political battle of nationalists, few texts on the use, distribution, and popularity of languages in Bukovina can be regarded as being without a political agenda. Based on the information available, however, it seems safe to say that many languages were spoken in Bukovina, but mainly within the respective native linguistic

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communities. Enough knowledge of other languages was available for necessary communication, but the level on which this communication took place was mostly modest, and most likely in a hybrid vernacular. Notable exceptions were the Bukovinian elites with their German orientation and the bilingual Orthodox village communities. Although very different in character, location, and appearance, nationalists of various types dubbed both groups “Bukovinians”—and this was not meant as a compliment.

Index Alsace-Lorraine 135, 155 Antonovici, Eusebie 257 Appel, Johann Freiherr von 87, 91, 98, 101–103, 108, 111 Ausländer, Rose 253 Austrian Silesia 9, 197–198, 201–202, 205, 213–214, 216–217 Bałak (L’viv dialect) 227, 237 Balkan Wars 65, 209 Ballaben, Anton 44 Balomiri, Simeon 141 Banat (region) 6, 9 Bánffy, Dezső 147, 171 Beksics, Gusztáv 137 Bela Crkva (Weißkirchen/Biserica Albă/ Fehértemplom) 149 Bellusco, Giuseppe 31 Beszterce-Naszód County 147, 149, 152, 157 Biała 136 Birnbaum, Nathan 253 Bistrița (Bistritz/Beszterce) 140 Bohemia 14 n. 5, 17, 23, 47, 153, 197–198, 201–202, 248 Boljunec 47 Bosanska Vila (newspaper) 96, 99 Bosanska Pošta (newspaper) 106 Bosnische Post (newspaper) 8, 87, 89–114 Bošnjak (newspaper) 90, 99–100, 103, 111 Brașov (Brassó/Kronstadt) 137, 140 Brassó County 139–140, 145, 147, 151–152, 155–157 Breg 45–47 Brodman, Joseph 30 Brody 16, 136 Brugge (Bruges) 155 Budapest (also Pest) 94, 98 n. 43, 108, 119, 124, 137, 139, 148, 161, 190 Burdia, Constantin 147 Caransebeș (Karánsebes/Karansebesch)  123, 126, 140, 142, 144–145, 147–148, 150, 151, 154, 156–157 Carniola (Krain/Krajna) 7, 31 n. 20, 34 n. 34, 35, 45, 46 n. 93, 50, 54, 56

Carniolan language (also Carniolan Slavic language) 31 n. 22, 32, 46, 52–54 Carpathian Basin 172, 187–188, 194 Cena, Nikolaus 117, 120, 129–130, 132–133 Census 20 n. 18, 23–24, 26, 35 n. 37, 39 n. 59, 41, 43 n .78, 57, 72, 74, 77, 88–89, 140, 163, 165, 167, 169, 174, 185, 187–188, 190–194, 221–224, 226, 229, 238, 251 České Budějovice (Budweis) 145, 247 Charles VI 29 Cheb (Eger) 153 Čibelj, Karl 44 Club of Croatian Writers in Osijek 85 n. 60 Cracow (Kraków) 216 Croatian National Theatre 8, 81–82, 86 Cross-linguistic interference 10, 264, 266 Czernowitz (Chernivtsi/Cernăuţi) 244–245, 249–250, 252, 255, 257–258, 266 Daneu, Andrej 45 Dashkyevych, Sylvester 262 Defacis, Karl 42–43 Dejak, Anton 45 Denationalization 22–23, 41 Deva (Déva) 138, 140, 156 Diamant, Max 253 Die Drau (newspaper) 78 Dnister dialect (Ukrainian) 235 Doda, Trajan 117, 120–125, 130–133 Dolina 29, 45–46, 47 n. 98, 48 Dresden/Dražd’any 14, 15 n. 6, 17, 104 Dukić, Ante 43 n. 78 Education (also schools) 1, 5, 8, 40, 52–53, 55, 58, 78, 122, 125, 127, 133, 155, 163, 168, 175–176, 178, 193, 195–197, 199, 203–204, 216–217, 220, 231, 236, 238, 240, 248, 257, 259, 267 Elections (also electoral rolls) 22, 62, 65, 89, 114, 124, 138, 140–141, 144, 155 Elisabeth, Empress 207, 212 Eötvös, József 137 Esseker 75–76, 85 Essekerism 76 n. 12, 77

270 Ethnicity (also ethnic groups, ethnic development) 14, 36, 80, 115, 163, 167, 174, 178, 188, 191–192, 223, 250 Feldman, Wilhelm 226 Flondor, Iancu 255 Franchise 138–140, 158 Francis Ferdinand, Archduke 64 Francis Joseph, Emperor 33, 62, 203, 208, 211–212, 257 Franko, Ivan 181, 226 Gabršček, Andrej 38 n. 55 Galicia 10, 16, 20, 136, 148, 153, 160–161, 163, 165, 167, 173–174, 180–181, 183, 186, 218–220, 223, 226, 234–239, 241, 248–249 Gorizia 7, 28–29, 38, 42 n. 72, 43, 69 Gorove, István 137 n. 7 Göetz, Leopol n von 254 Graz 62, 104, 116, 126 Gregorčič, Anton 38 n. 55 Gregorin, Gustav 40 Halickie district (Lemberg/Lwów/L’viv) 225 Hammer-Purgstall, Josef 12–13, 21 Hirth, Oskar 107, 110–111 Hohenlohe, Konrad 263 Holek, Wenzel 17–18, 25 Hribar, Ivan 64–65 Hunedoara (Vajdahunyad) 140 Hungarian Law of Nationalities (1868) 118, 121, 124, 136, 149, 151–152, 157 Hybridization (of languages) 267 Indifference (to language) 193, 266 Intellectuals 53, 55, 67, 73, 86, 108, 131 n. 41, 166, 177, 179, 194, 245 Ipavec, Andrej 38 n. 55 Istria 34, 45 Jekel, Friedrich 147 Jews 9, 20 n. 18, 76, 161–162, 182–185, 194, 203, 206, 223–224, 232, 244–245, 249–251, 253 n. 29, 258, 260, 265 n. 72 Joseph II, Emperor 29, 54, 202, 252 Judiciary 55, 168, 239

Index Kalister, Janez 44 Karl I, Emperor 212 Karst 43 n. 80, 44 Klagenfurt 69, 153 Kolín (Kolin) 153 Koper 44–47 Kopitar, Bartholomäus (Jernej) 54, 57 Kozina, Mateuž 46 n. 95 Kraków district (Lemberg/Lwów/L’viv)  224–225 Krassó-Szörény County 123, 147, 150, 152 Kremsier Constitutional draft 20 Lviv (L’viv/Lwów/Lemberg) 6, 10, 136, 218–219, 221–222, 224–226, 228–232, 234–243 Lampe, Eduard 47 Landesüblichkeit (province-wide language currency) 152–153 Lani, Gottfried 147 Liberec (Reichenberg) 148 Littoral (Küstenland/Litorale/primorje)  26–28, 34 n. 34, 37 n. 46, 38, 42–43, 47 Ljubljana (Laibach) 7–8, 42 n. 72, 50, 52–53, 56–58, 61–70 Lovriha, Janez 47 n. 98 Lueger, Karl 144 Lugoj (Lugosch/Lugos) 138, 140, 142, 144–146, 149–150, 152, 154, 156, 158 Mach, Franz 107, 110 Magjer, Rodolfo Franjin 85 Magyarization 8–9, 83, 116, 118–119, 125–126, 133, 135, 137, 139, 142, 145, 158, 175, 191 Makanec, Julije 91–93, 96–98 Marburg/Maribor 15–18 Maria Theresa, Empress 29 Mediaș (Mediasch/Medgyes) 146 Migrants (also emigrants, immigrants, immigrant communities) 14, 16, 30, 83, 89, 91 n. 16, 95, 112–114, 163, 167 Military Frontier (Military Border) 9, 115–117, 119–122, 130–131, 133–134, 149 Ministry of Defence, Hungary 149–150 Ministry of Interior, Hungary 146 Mocsonyi, Alexandru 120, 122, 131 Morariu-Andrievici, Silvestru 262 Moravia 48, 153, 183, 197, 201, 204

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Selak, Franjo/Franz 104, 107 Šeptyc’kyj, Andryj 226 Sežana (Sesana) 42 n. 75, 44, 48 Sighișoara (Schäßburg/Segesvár) 139 Simiginowicz-Staufe, Ludwig Adolf 260 Narodna obrana (newspaper) 8, 78 nn. 20, Slavina 44 23, 79–80, 82–84, 85 n. 63, 86 Slavonia 6, 74, 78 n. 21 Nossig, Alfred 237 Slovene People’s Party 60, 63–64 Šram, Bratoljub 85 October Diploma (1861) 137 Stadion, Franz, Count 33 Opčine (Opicina) 45 Stark, Rudolf 44 Orăștie (Szászváros/Broos) 139–142, 144, Statutes (municipal statutes) 143, 146–147, 149–150, 154, 156–157 154 Orthodoxy 65, 130, 185, 252 Štúr, Ľudovit 58 Osijek (Eszék/Esseg) 8, 72–86, 103 Österreich-Teschen, Albrecht, Archduke von  Subcarpathia/Transcarpathia 164 Szeben County 147, 157 204 Ostrava (Ostrau/Ostrawa) 202, 216 Tausk, Hermann 99–101, 106, 109 Teaca (Tekendorf/Teke) 138 Parliament (Reichsrat/Reichstag) 97 Temesvár (Temeswar/Timișoara/Temišvar)  Pawlitschek, Anna 265 120, 124–125, 140 Pazin 43 n. 78 Territorial army (also Landwehr and Piłsudski, Józef 215 Honvéd) 59 Pipan, Ivan (Giovanni) 44 Teschen (Cieszyn) 9, 198–199, 201–205, Pola (Pula) 65, 70 208 Police (also police departments) 17, 82 n. 40, Thalmann, Gustav 147 92, 142, 144, 147, 151, 232, 235–236, 239, Tisza, Kálmán 138, 149, 150, 158, 169 253 Toepffer, Eugen, Ritter von 92, 96–98 Popovici, Aurel 120 nn. 12, 14, 167 n. 16 Tolmin 42 n. 72 Prague 15, 23, 81, 98 n. 43, 105, 144, 197–198 Tomsich, Luigia 46 Preindlsberger, Josef 104, 113 Town with county rights (törvényhatósági Prešeren, France 56–57 jogú város) 137 Przemyśl 67, 210 Town with settled council (rendezett tanácsú város) 137, 143 n. 29 Ravnikar, Matevž 33 Trampuž, Bruno 49 n. 106 Reghin (Sächsisch Regen/Szászrégen) 149 Translation (also translators) 4, 10–11, 13–14, Regner-Bleyleben, Oktavian 263 19, 53, 101, 106–107, 110, 146, 151, 153, 232, Riga 135 262–263 Risorgimento 33–34, 37 Transylvania 6, 9, 14, 115, 118, 132–133, 135, Rojan suburb (Trieste/Trst/Triest) 44 139–141, 183, 191 Roma 9, 187–189, 191–192, 194 Transylvanian Saxons 135, 139 Rybář, Otokar 43 Trapsia, Michael von 117, 120, 125–128, 130–133 Saxon Land (Fundus Regius) 137 Trieste (Trst/Triest) 6–7, 16, 28–39, 41–48, Sbiera, Ion 251, 258 56, 247 Schmarda, Johann Baptist 98, 101, 103, Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and 105–106, 110, 112 Dalmatia 74 Sebeș (Mühlbach/Szászsebes) 140–141, Trnovec, Ivan 43 144–148, 151, 154, 156 Moravian Compromise 153 Mrazović, Milena 95, 98–104, 113 Musavat (newspaper) 91 n. 16

272 Trnovec, Matej 42 Tuma, Henrik 42–44 Umgangssprache (also colloquial language, everyday speech, conversational language, the vernacular) 11, 41, 153, 162, 222–224 Ungvár (Uzhhorod) 165–166, 173 n. 39, 176, 189 Ustia, Tommaso 31 Valussi, Pacifico 37 Vesel Koseski, Jovan 36 n. 41 Vienna 11–12, 20–21, 30, 33, 36, 42, 43 n. 78, 56, 92, 94–95, 98–99, 103–104, 113–116, 119, 124, 130–133, 144, 153, 161, 180–181, 198, 211 n. 81, 218, 239, 245, 247–248, 250, 257–258

Index Vilfan, Josip 42 n. 71 Vinga 138 Virilism 139, 158 Vivante, Angelo 27 n. 8, 38 n. 54 Vodopiuc, Bartolomeus 46 n. 94 Weigand, Gustav 262 Yriarte, Charles 30, 31 n. 19 Zabrežec 46 n. 93 Zamarstyniv district (Zamarstynów) 224 Zenchovich, Joahim 44 Znesinnja district (Zniesienie) 224 Żółkiew district (Lemberg/Lwów/L’viv) 224