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This book offers a comparative analysis of the societal, ethnic, and cultural diversity of twelve cities in the last decades of the Habsburg Monarchy. The following cities are discussed (by their current names): Arad, Bratislava, Brno, Chernivtsi, Lviv, Oradea, Rijeka, Sarajevo, Subotica, Timioara, Trieste, and Zagreb. This selection aims to counter the disproportionate attention that the largest cities in the empire receive. By focusing on everyday life--associations, schools, economy, and municipal politics--the book escapes from the idealization of the monarchy as a paradise of peaceful multiculturalism as well as from the exaggeration of the conflicts. The author claims that the world of the Habsburg cities was a dynamic space where many models coexisted and created vitality, emulation, and conflict. Modernization brought about the dissolution of old structures but also mobility, the progress of education, the explosion of associative life, and a constantly growing cultural offering.

Multicultural Cities of the Habsburg Empire, 1880-1914: Imagined Communities and Conflictual Encounters

List of illustrations

Foreword

Introduction



Chapter I. CITY PROFILES

- The status of the cities and municipal law in Austria and Hungary

- Twelve cities of Austria-Hungary: twelve different situations and many similarities.

Chapter II. AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN TOWER OF BABEL: THE CITY AND ITS LANGUAGES

- Defining the languages

- Statistical approach of multilingualism

- Multifaceted polyglots

- Literacy and language practice

- Visible multiculturalism

- City language

Chapter III. BELLS AND CHURCH TOWERS: THE CONFESSIONAL DIVERSITY

- A contrasted confessional landscape

- The Jews: a multicultural group par excellence?

- The Roman Catholics

- The Greek-Catholics

- The Orthodox

- Evangelic and Reformed Protestantism

- The diversity of Judaism

- The Muslims: newcomers in the scene of confessional diversity

- Mobile communities: mixed marriages and conversions

- Religion and national politics

- The multiconfessional town: Building churches, temples and synagogues

Chapter IV. SCHOOLS: LEARNING MULTICULTURALISM OR FACTORY OF THE NATION?

- The framework of instruction and school systems in Austria-Hungary

- Languages in school curricula

- National struggle and gender issue

Chapter V. CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS: MULTICULTURALISM AND NATIONAL DISCOURSE

- Cultural associations as political actors

- The song of the nation: choruses

- National institutes

- Women's associations: new ways of action.

- Jewish associative life: coming out of the ghetto.

- The city as a stage: nationalizing the theatre

- The press : actor and enemy of multiculturalism

Chapter VI. SPACES AND LANDSCAPES OF THE CITY

- Modernizing the city

- The appropriation of the public space

- Uses and struggles for the space

Chapter VII. POLITICS IN THE CITY

- Inside the town hall

- Political parties

Chapter VIII. SHARING THE CITY

- The dimensions of local patriotism

- Celebrating the city

- The loyal city : memorializing the Habsburg

- Two cases of "constructed" Habsburg cities: Czernowitz and Sarajevo. A colonial project?



Conclusion Appendix Bibliography Index