Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe

The hundred years between the revolutions of 1848 and the population transfers of the mid-twentieth century saw the nationalization of culturally complex societies in East Central Europe. This fact has variously been explained in terms of modernization, state building and nation-building theories, each of which treats the process of nationalization as something inexorable, a necessary component of modernity. Although more recently social scientists gesture to the contingencies that may shape these larger developments, this structural approach makes scholars far less attentive to the "hard work" (ideological, political, social) undertaken by individuals and groups at every level of society who tried themselves to build "national" societies. The essays in this volume make us aware of how complex, multi-dimensional and often contradictory this nationalization process in East Central Europe actually was. The authors document attempts and failures by nationalist politicians, organizations, activists and regimes from 1848 through 1948 to give East-Central Europeans a strong sense of national self-identification. They remind us that only the use of dictatorial powers in the 20th century could actually transform the fantasy of nationalization into a reality, albeit a brutal one.

The hundred years between the revolutions of 1848 and the population transfers of the mid-twentieth century saw the nationalization of culturally complex societies in East Central Europe. This fact has variously been explained in terms of modernization, state building and nation-building theories, each of which treats the process of nationalization as something inexorable, a necessary component of modernity. Although more recently social scientists gesture to the contingencies that may shape these larger developments, this structural approach makes scholars far less attentive to the “hard work” (ideological, political, social) undertaken by individuals and groups at every level of society who tried themselves to build “national” societies. The essays in this volume make us aware of how complex, multi-dimensional and often contradictory this nationalization process in East Central Europe actually was. The authors document attempts and failures by nationalist politicians, organizations, activists and regimes from 1848 through 1948 to give East-Central Europeans a strong sense of national self-identification. They remind us that only the use of dictatorial powers in the 20th century could actually transform the fantasy of nationalization into a reality, albeit a brutal one.

List of Maps
List of Illustrations

Preface
Gary B. Cohen

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe
Pieter M. Judson

Chapter 1. From Tolerated Aliens to Citizen-Soldiers: Jewish Military Service in the Era of Joseph II
Michael K. Silber

Chapter 2. The Revolution in Symbols: Hungary in 1848–1849
Robert Nemes

Chapter 3. Nothing Wrong with My Bodily Fluids: Gymnastics, Biology, and Nationalism in the Germanies before 1871
Daniel A. McMillan

Chapter 4. Between Empire and Nation: The Bohemian Nobility, 1880–1918
Eagle Glassheim

Chapter 5. The Bohemian Oberammergau: Nationalist Tourism in the Austrian Empire
Pieter M. Judson

Chapter 6. The Sacred and the Profane: Religion and Nationalism in the Bohemian Lands, 1880–1920
Cynthia Paces and Nancy M. Wingfield

Chapter 7. All For One! One for All! The Federation of Slavic Sokols and the Failure of Neo-Slavism
Claire E. Nolte

Chapter 8. Staging Habsburg Patriotism: Dynastic Loyalty and the 1898 Imperial Jubilee
Daniel Unowsky

Chapter 9. Arbiters of Allegiance: Austro-Hungarian Censors during World War I
Alon Rachamimov

Chapter 10. Sustaining Austrian “National” Identity in Crisis: The Dilemma of the Jews in Habsburg Austria, 1914–1919
Marsha L. Rozenblit

Chapter 11. “Christian Europe” and National Identity in Interwar Hungary
Paul Hanebrink

Chapter 12. 12. Just What is Hungarian? Concepts of National Identity in the Hungarian Film Industry, 1931–1944
David Frey

Chapter 13. The Hungarian Institute for Research into the Jewish Question and Its Participation in the Expropriation and Expulsion of Hungarian Jewry
Patricia von Papen-Bodek

Chapter 14. Indigenous Collaboration in the Government General: The Case of the Sonderdienst
Peter Black

Chapter 15. Getting the Small Decree: Czech National Honor in the Aftermath of the Nazi Occupation
Benjamin Frommer

Index