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• The image of the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire: From its dismissal in 1919 to its rediscovery for the European Union after 1989

  167-188

  Michael Prosser-Schell

  Views:

  166

  This article delineates the image of the Habsburg Empire in the 20^th century in order to analyse its current representation in historiography in the German language. Before the Great War, the comprehensive compendium „Die österreichisch-unga­rische Monarchie in Wort und Bild“ (The Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy in Word and Image) presented the old Habsburg Empire in a very positive light. According to the compendium, the strong and progressive multi-ethnic state served as a model for the institution of the nation state. After the Great War, the Habsburg Empire appears as a weak, even non-functional state in historiography in the German language.  It is described as internally divided due to ethnic conflicts of interest. However, after 1990, following the publication of Claudio Magris’ renowned works, in particular his book on the river Danube, the image of the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire as a culturally and politically dynamic actor has been reclaimed. After the enlargement of the European Union in 2004, the state’s multi-ethnic character has frequently been presented as a role model for European integration. To further illustrate this point, this article will examine the reasons for which Temeswar in the Banat was selected as European Capital of Culture.

• The Recommendation of Ethnic Diversity in Late Habsburgian State and some Parallels in the Cultural Conception of the EU after 2004

  253-282

  Michael Prosser-Schell

  Views:

  69

  First of all, the article discusses that the ancient Habsburgian state (end of 19th – early 20th century), which had explicitly recommended and fostered ethnic diversity, gains a benevolent interpretation in some important academic presentations nowadays. This seems remarkable because the late Habsburgian monarchy after 1919 until ca. 2000 was examined as a failed state. The article analyses, based on the famous and popular-written applied geography „Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild“ (called „Kronprinzenwerk“, 1981–1902), how the recommendation of ethnic diversity was framed and expressed in that time. The article especially wants to show the arguments in which the strength of the pluriethnic and pluricultural Habsburgian empire generally had to be reasoned. Furthermore, the paper chooses 3 specific cases of an affirmative regional and ethnic description of the „Kronprinzenwerk“: Ruthens in Galicia, Serbs and Germans („svabians“) in Southern Hungary of that time. Nowadays, we see a strikingly similar argument in the European Union to recommend ethnic and cultural diversity to achieve a consolidated socio-economic grouping. An outstanding and prominent example is the speech of French President Emmanuel Macron in 2017 at Sorbonne University.