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

• Author: Horel, Catherine.
• Place / Publishing House: Budapest : : Central European University Press,, 2023.; ©2023.
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (570 pages)

"Catherine Horel has undertaken a comparative analysis of the societal, ethnic, and cultural diversity in the last decades of the Habsburg Monarchy as represented in twelve cities: Arad, Bratislava, Brno, Chernivtsi, Lviv, Oradea, Rijeka, Sarajevo, Subotica, Timișoara, Trieste, and Zagreb. By purposely selecting these cities, the author aims to counter the disproportionate attention that the largest cities in the empire receive. With a focus on the aspects of everyday life faced by the city inhabitants (associations, schools, economy, and municipal politics) the book avoids any idealization of the monarchy as a paradise of peaceful multiculturalism, and also avoids exaggerating 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 constantly growing cultural offerings"-- Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations -- Foreword -- Introduction -- City profiles -- Austro-Hungarian Tower of Babel: the city and its languages -- Bells and church towers: the confessional diversity -- Schools: learning multiculturalism or factory of the nation? -- Cultural institutions: multiculturalism and national discourse -- Spaces and landscapes of the city -- Politics in the city --Conclusion -- Appendix -- Bibliography -- Index.