Disputed Cultures. Nationbuilding and Cultural Institutions in the Cities of the Habsburg Monarchy 1880-1914

The multicultural cities of the Habsburg Monarchy were the place of national contest. The national revival of each people was achieved mainly through the building of cultural institutions: schools, "matice", theaters, associations promoting education and national consciousness. In the cities dominated by one strong political nation (Germans, Magyars, Italians), the others struggled to obtain their own cultural institutions: this gave rise to conflict and sometimes violence. Culture was thus often a pretext to promote assimilation because some pretended to have a "higher" culture than the others. In the cities, where more than two nationalities were present, multiculturalism survived and each group was able to express its own cultural discourse.

Catherine Horel is Research Director at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), she teaches Contemporary History of Central Europe at the University of Paris I. Her latest books are: Cette Europe qu'on dit centrale. Des Habsbourg à l'intégration européenne 1815-2204, Paris, Beauchesne, 2009; and Soldaten zwischen nationalen Fronten. Die Auflösung der Militärgrenze und die Entwicklung der königlich-ungarischen Landwehr in Kroatien 1868-1914, Vienna, Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2009. She was a Senior Fellow at Collegium Budapest in 2007-2008 and works on a project about "Multicultural cities of the Habsburg Monarchy 1867-1914".