Petr Kadlec and Ivan Puš: Modernisation of Commercial Education in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918. Patterns, Trends, Processes.

Petr Kadlec and Ivan Puš: Modernisation of Commercial Education in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918. Patterns, Trends, Processes. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112242698

About this book

This publication has been peer reviewed. 

Were commercial schools a natural product of the modernising society or rather a precondition for its successful development and the state's well-being? In this monograph, the authors trace the trends, processes and circumstances of the creation of modern vocational schools, specifically of various types of commercial schools.

Lying at the edge of social and business history and history of education, the book leads the reader through Imperial Austria in the years 1848–1918, providing numerous examples of school practice. It explains the social, economic and political circumstances in which the commercial schools were created, and how far this was the initiative of merchants, municipalities, provincial authorities or the state administration. It also describes the opportunities that commercial schools offered to women. The final chapter discusses the impact of the Great War on schools, their pupils and their teachers.

This book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of education and social or business history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Where possible, it draws comparisons with other European countries, opening up reflections on the modernisation of Europe at that time, especially in Germany, Hungary and France.

Author / Editor information

Petr Kadlec, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Ivan Puš, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic.

Traditiones Vol. 55 No. 1 (2026): Habsburške živali / Habsburg Animals

 Traditiones Vol. 55 No. 1 (2026): Habsburške živali / Habsburg Animals

Volume Editors: Daša Ličen and Wolfgang Göderle

This special issue is situated within the vibrant field of Habsburg history, which—despite the strong resonance of the animal turn in recent decades—has not seen a comparable expansion in animal history research. Nonhuman animals nevertheless deserve a place in historical narratives, even if not as primary protagonists. A fully non-anthropocentric animal history remains unattainable, as both sources and their interpretation are mediated by human perspectives. Humans thus remain central, but as actors deeply entangled with animal lives. The central question guiding this issue concerns how animals shape human history, and, conversely, how humans shape animal history. By foregrounding these reciprocal relationships, this issue explores a vision of Habsburg history that extends beyond the human while recognizing the agency of nonhuman animals.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/Traditio20265501

Published: 30.04.2026

Habsburg History Beneath the Eagle: The Empire and Its AnimalsDaša Ličen

7–28

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“Habsburg” Breeds? Breed Selection and the Construction of an Agricultural State in the 19th-Century Habsburg EmpireCorentin Gruffat

29–52

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Breeding Nationalism: Conceiving the Native BreedsTadej Pavković

53–67

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Hunting and Environmental Consciousness in Late Ottoman and Habsburg HerzegovinaCathie Carmichael

69–88

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Animals in the Educational Discourse in Habsburg Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Early Twentieth CenturyMitsutoshi Inaba

89–113

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Agents of the Air: Pigeons in the Political and Social Networks of Habsburg and Post-Habsburg HungaryRóbert Balogh

115–140

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The Dynamic Relationships of Human-Horse Cooperation in ViennaGašper Raušl

141–163

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Robert Shields Mevissen: The Danube Empire An Environmental History of Habsburg State Building and Civic Engagement.

  Robert Shields Mevissen: The Danube Empire An Environmental History of Habsburg State Building and Civic Engagement.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025.  ISBN 9780822967798.

In the nineteenth century, changes to the environment, driven by ideology, natural forces, and burgeoning fossil fuel power, shifted the course of the Habsburg Empire. Along the Danube—Europe’s second longest river—hydraulic engineering projects ranging from bridges to embankments and shipping hubs affected the river’s dynamics, as did new activities related to trade, industrialization, sanitation, recreation, and agriculture. Taking a unique environmental perspective to explore questions of transnational solidarity and identity, The Danube Empire argues that the Danube River served as both a catalyst and a tool for institution building. Drawing on primary sources in German and Hungarian, Robert Shields Mevissen reconstructs how various communities throughout the empire viewed and shaped river engineering works as a means to promote material wellbeing and economic vitality. As they negotiated their conflicting and overlapping interests, they engaged government at all levels, from the imperial to the local, through democratic and civic avenues. Offering new insights into the state’s normative development and robust civil society, Mevissen shows how an empire, in reshaping a river, reshaped itself.

More Praise

 This book is more than just an account of a great river running through an empire in decline. Mevissen makes clear that all human affairs—may they be political, economic, or cultural—must not be separated from the environments they affect and in which they are embedded. Martin Schmid, BOKU University

 The Danube River ran through the Habsburg Monarchy for 850 miles—offering a vast, life-giving artery from one end of the empire to the other. But the promise of irrigation, fishery, navigation, and transportation could only be met if people from Linz to Vienna to Budapest to Bucharest could agree on its use and regulation. This book, written by a fresh new voice in environmental history, traces the work done to make sure the Danube was a source of common good rather than endless conflict. It’s a model of investigating the complex network of economic, social, cultural, and environmental forces at work in managing one of the most critical ecosystems in Central Europe. Alison Frank Johnson, Harvard University

about the author

Robert Shields Mevissen is assistant professor in the Department of Civic Engagement and Leadership at Culver–Stockton College.

hps.cesee global book talk: Borbála Zsuzsanna Török, László Kontler, Morgane Labbé: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880

 hps.cesee global book talk: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880. Monday, May 26, 11:00 am EDT / 17:00 CET / 18:00 EEST, Zoom.

ABOUT THIS EVENT

Virtual platform HPS.CESEE (History of Science in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe) is proud to present its forthcoming book talk on a new publication on history of statistics. László Kontler and Morgane Labbé will join Borbála Zsuzsanna Török to comment on her recent book: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 (2024) [1], in a discussion moderated by Katalin Stráner.

Monday, May 26, 11:00 am DST / 17:00 CET / 18:00 EEST, Zoom.

The meeting is free and open to the public. To receive the Zoom link, please register here: https://forms.gle/mFnfLEDXEbC8L8iY8 or write to hps.cesee@gmail.com

[1] Borbála Zsuzsanna Török: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 (Oxford, New York: Berghahn 2024)

“The formation of modern European states during the long 19th century was a strenuous process, challenged by the integration of widely different territories and populations. The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 builds on recent research to investigate the history of statistics as an overlooked part of the sciences of the state in Habsburg legal education as well as within the broader public sphere. By exploring the practices and social spaces of statistics, Borbála Zsuzsanna Török uncovers its central role in imagining the composite Habsburg Monarchy as a modern and unified administrative space.”

Participants

Borbála Zsuzsanna Török is a historian specializing in the social history of civil justice and modern state knowledge in the Habsburg Monarchy. She currently serves as part-time acting professor for Modern History at the University of Heidelberg. She is Privatdozentin at University of Vienna’s Institute for Austrian Historical Research and PI of the research project “Mobilisierung der Ziviljustiz und Sozialpolitik in der Habsburgermonarchie, 1873–1914,” funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), whose follow-up project has been recently approved. Her research focuses on the social history of law, property, statistics, nationalism, and knowledge transfer in East-Central Europe. She has held fellowships from the FWF, DFG, and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and is the author of Exploring Transylvania. Geographies of Knowledge and Entangled Histories of a Multiethnic Province, 1790 – 1914 (2015).

László Kontler is a historian of early modern European intellectual history and the Enlightenment, with a focus on political thought, historiography, and the transnational circulation of ideas. Based at Central European University since its inception, he has also held fellowships and taught at institutions including Cambridge, Rutgers, and Oxford. His recent work includes studies on the reception of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, the Viennese Jesuit astronomer Maximilian Hell, and the cultural construction of humanity in the early modern period.

Morgane Labbé is a historian and demographer specializing in population policies, nationalism, and social protection in Central Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. She is a Directrice d'études at the EHESS (Paris), affiliated with the Centre of Historical Research (CRH), and has played key roles in international academic partnerships with institutions in Warsaw and Michigan. Her research focuses on the history of statistics, social politics, demography, and charitable institutions in imperial contexts, and she has been an active contributor to scholarly networks and editorial boards in these fields.

Katalin Stráner is a historian of modern Europe at Newcastle University, with a focus on transnational history, particularly the history of science, migration, and urban culture in the Habsburg Empire and East Central Europe. She holds a PhD in History from Central European University and has held fellowships and academic positions across Europe and the US, including at Harvard, UCL, and the European University Institute. Her research explores how knowledge and scientific ideas are produced, translated, and transformed through cultural mobility, with current projects on Darwinism in Habsburg Hungary and migration from East Central Europe to Britain.

Peter Urbanitsch: "... das Schulwesen ist und bleibet allzeit ein Politicum ..." Aspekte zur cisleithanischen Bildungsgeschichte 1848‒1918

 Peter Urbanitsch: "... das Schulwesen ist und bleibet allzeit ein Politicum ..." Aspekte zur cisleithanischen Bildungsgeschichte 1848‒1918. Vienna: ÖAW 2025. ISBN 978-3-7001-9417-0

1848 setzte ein umfassender Modernisierungsprozess des Bildungswesens in der Habsburgermonarchie ein, dessen Auswirkungen bis in die Gegenwart erkennbar sind. Entsprechend dem liberal-aufklärerischen Ethos sollte das Bildungsniveau gehoben, der Einfluss der Kirche verringert, die Urteilsfähigkeit gestärkt, das eigenständige Denken angeregt und der Jugend ein an Kaiser und Reich orientierter Patriotismus eingeimpft werden. Die Vermittlung praktischer Kenntnisse sollte das wirtschaftliche Fortkommen ermöglichen. Das Reichvolksschulgesetz von 1869 brachte einen entscheidenden Aufschwung für das Primärschulwesen. Unmittelbar vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg wurden fast alle Volksschulkinder in der Muttersprache unterrichtet. Das Sprachenproblem spielte auch im höheren Schulwesen eine wichtige Rolle. Nicht allen Nationalitäten stand ein kompletter Bildungsweg „von der Wiege bis zur Bahre“ zur Verfügung. Die Gymnasien waren dem neuhumanistischen Bildungsideal verpflichtet. Dagegen trugen die Realschulen und die berufsbildenden Schulen den Erfordernissen eines neuen, von Naturwissenschaften und Technik geprägten Weltbildes Rechnung. Auch die Universitäten und anderen Hohen Schulen folgten diesem Trend. In vielen Fächern wurden Spitzenleistungen erzielt. Allerdings konnten nur sehr wenige junge Männer, und sehr spät und in noch geringerer Zahl junge Frauen, eine sekundäre oder tertiäre Bildungsanstalt besuchen. Umso bedeutsamer war das von der Zivilgesellschaft getragene, breit gefächerte Volksbildungswesen. Zwar wurden nicht überall die bereits 1848 formulierten Ziele erreicht, dennoch schufen die von Staat, Ländern, Gemeinden, Interessenvertretungen und der Zivilgesellschaft gesetzten Maßnahmen eine feste Basis zur Bewältigung der neuen Herausforderungen auch nach dem Ende der Habsburgermonarchie.

Borbála Zsuzsanna Török: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880

Borbála Zsuzsanna Török: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880. New York: Berghahn 2024. ISBN  978-1-80539-554-6

Description

The formation of modern European states during the long 19th century was a complicated process, challenged by the integration of widely different territories and populations. The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 builds on recent research to investigate the history of statistics as an overlooked part of the sciences of the state in Habsburg legal education as well as within the broader public sphere. By exploring the practices and social spaces of statistics, author Borbála Zsuzsanna Török uncovers its central role in imagining the composite Habsburg Monarchy as a modern and unified administrative space.

Borbala Zsuzsanna Török is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Austrian Historical Studies, University of Vienna. She is the author of Exploring Transylvania: Geographies of Knowledge and Entangled Histories of a Multiethnic Province, 1790–1914 (Brill, 2015). She co-edited Berechnen/Beschreiben: Praktiken statistischen (Nicht-)Wissens 1750–1850 (Duncker & Humblot, 2015) with Gunhild Berg and Marcus Twellmann, as well as Negotiating Knowledge in Early-Modern Empires: A Decentered View (Palgrave, 2014) with László Kontler, Antonella Romano, and Silvia Sebastiani.

hybrid workshop: "Making Knowledge on Ukraine in the Interwar Period", 25.09.– 26.09.2023

 "Making Knowledge on Ukraine in the Interwar Period", 25.09.– 26.09.2023. IOS Regensburg & zoom, organised by Galina Babak, Martin Rohde and Jan Surman. Program and registration: https://imagesofscience.wordpress.com/making-knowledge-on-ukraine-in-the-interwar-period/

The Russian war against Ukraine resulted in a massive displacement of Ukrainian scholars and increasing attempts to make knowledge on Ukraine. At the same time a discussion emerged about the persons who could legitimately claim expertise about the country. The figure of the expert has oscillated between the “native informants,” whose legitimacy came from their local knowledge, and “Westsplainers,” whose local expertise was questionable. Acknowledging that the question of legitimacy is also a question about the situatedness of knowledge, we propose to investigate practices of knowledge making on the Ukrainian lands, its inhabitants and its recent history, with a focus on the interwar period.

World War I put Ukraine on the mental maps of Europe, both as an imagined construct and as a body of separate political entities. Ukraine appeared on maps and in international debates, and Ukrainian intellectuals were visible like never before due to the global interest in the region and their political impetus to legitimize their own knowledge on Ukraine. After the Great War, the displacement of scholars and politicians increased their entanglements with non-Ukrainian institutions and scholars all over Europe.

At the end of WWI, the imagined Ukrainian lands were integrated as new regions into various states. In the interwar decades they remained a subject of intensified interest in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Inquiries involved a range of actors apart from professional academics, such as officials, citizen scientists, entrepreneurs, teachers, travel authors, translators, memoirists, and photographers. Whether minorities or émigrés, Ukrainian intellectuals were subjected to power relations and often violence, which also limited their possibilities to become part of official discourses about the regions of their origins. The attitude towards them ranged from active cooperation to complete ignorance, often in reciprocity with ideologies and loyalties to state-building, nation-building or geopolitical projects.

We invite the public to join us in a workshop exploring, among others, the following questions:

How did political dynamics shape Ukraine's visibility in the interwar period?

How did Ukrainians maintain and use global networks to circulate authentic knowledge about their nation?

Who else was involved in creating or contesting knowledge about Ukraine, and what tensions arose in this discourse? How did World War I reshape the foundational theories of Ukrainian Studies (Ukrainoznavstvo)?

How did Ukrainians document and institutionalise the historical period 1914—1923?

How did different hierarchies affect the production of knowledge about Ukraine in different geographical contexts?

How was knowledge about Ukraine suppressed or distorted, and what role did violence play in silencing a "national minority"?

We look forward to exploring a rich diversity of perspectives, particularly with regard to the transnational interconnections of the issues highlighted. The workshop will include contributions that not only address Ukrainian actors directly, but also interact with knowledge about Ukraine from different perspectives. A wide range of disciplines will be represented, with a focus on interdisciplinary approaches to promote a comprehensive understanding of the issues discussed.

The workshop is jointly organized and supported by IOS Regensburg, the Institute of History (Czech Academy of Sciences), and the Lumina quaeruntur project “Images of science” in Czechoslovakia 1918—1945—1968 (Masaryk Institute and Archives, Czech Academy of Sciences).

Call for Papers (Summer School): Empire of Circulation. Habsburg Knowledge in its Global Settings.

 Call for Papers (Summer School): Empire of Circulation. Habsburg Knowledge in its Global Settings. A summer school organized by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Johann Gottfried Herder-Research Council in cooperation with the Institute of Czech Literature of the CAS. 3–6 October 2022

Placing Habsburg knowledge production from the 17th to the 20th centuries afresh in its global settings, this event will serve as a platform for doctoral, post-doctoral and senior researchers who specialise in Habsburg history, the history of science, scholarship and intellectual culture. Our event will allot a special place to Bohemia and its role as an interface between the regions of the Empire and as a switchboard between Central Europe and the globe.

Our re-discovery of Habsburg Central Europe as a clearinghouse for the circulation of ideas, practices and objects aims at a broader historiographical purpose: We do not consider Central Europe as a self-contained space, but encourage approaches that think outside the box, uncovering linkages and channels of exchange that help us to move beyond standard notions of space that undergird national and territorial histories. This implies that we will not treat Central Europe as a self-contained specialism, but as a springboard for the global history of knowledge-making. In pursuing this agenda, we encourage the development of research strategies that combine the study of the global ingredient in Habsburg Central Europe with the Central European lineaments of world history in innovative ways.

We invite papers of doctoral and post-doctoral researchers that contribute to one or several of the following thematic fields:

The study of

 institutions of knowledge-production (learned societies, academies, universities, churches, religious orders, secret societies, museums, theatres etc)

 the interplay of regional and global literature (translations, travelling habits, travelling forms, media and genres)

 the activities of go-betweens, brokers and liason agents

 the shifting political functions and expected pay-off of the knowledge produced

Discussing recent cutting-edge advances in the history of knowledge-circulation, relational history and connected history (e.g. Kapil Raj, Simon Schaffer, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Bernhard Schär), the summer school will also give due weight to postcolonial and decolonial approaches.

Our four-day summer school will consist of two components: an extended seminar hosted by the convenors will permit the participates to discuss a precirculated reader that contains both some of the convenors’ own work as well as other exemplary studies; a subsequent series of workshops will enable doctoral and post-doctoral researchers to present and discuss their projects with the faculty.

We invite applications both by junior scholars from Central Europe who work on the above-mentioned themes as well as by colleagues from other parts of the world whose research deals with our region.

Organizers: Franz L. Fillafer (Vienna), Johannes Feichtinger (Vienna), Steffen Höhne (Weimar-Jena), Alfrun Kliems (Berlin), Michael Wögerbauer (Prague)

Conference Languages: English and German

Location: Campus of the Austrian Academy and Sciences, Vienna.

Audience: Doctoral and Postdoctoral researchers

Conference languages: English and German

Application: Abstract of your contribution/research project (250-300 words) and a brief CV Kurzvita (preferably as PDF). Send to: steffen.hoehne@hfm-weimar.de

Deadline for submissions: 13 March 2022

We plan to cover participants’ travel and accomodation costs.

Anna Kobylińska, Maciej Falski (eds.) Architects and their Societies. Cultural Study on the Habsburg-Slavic Area (1861–1938). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 2021. ISBN/ISSN: 978-83-235-4983-3

The idea of looking at the architects operating within the cultural framework of the Habsburg Empire, embedded in this book, stems from our previous research. It has its roots in the research on Slavic peripheral narratives, conducted by the Research Group on the Slavic Cultures in the Habsburg Monarchy (http://uwhabsburgstudies.uw.edu.pl/), which has operated since 2011 at the Institute of Western and Southern Slavic Studies of the University of Warsaw. We studied the issue of peripheral attitudes towards both national narratives, created after 1861 by the Slovak, Czech and Croatian elites, and the imperial project imposed by Vienna and Budapest. Faithful to the microlevel approach, we looked at figures, spaces and social phenomena that do not fit into the stereotypical view of national historiography.

ToC: https://www.wuw.pl/data/links/c57f4e480da87e4db02a1225117ca4cc/14733_9063.pdf

Veronika Jičínská (ed.): Fritz Mauthner (1849–1923): Zwischen Sprachphilosophie und Literatur. Köln: Böhlau Verlag 2021. ISBN: 978-3-412-52087-8

 

Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923), der deutschsprachige Denker jüdischer Herkunft, geboren im ostböhmischen Horzitz/Hořice, aufgewachsen und ausgebildet in Prag, in Berlin als Journalist und Theaterkritiker tätig, war ein produktiver Autor und wird heute vor allem als Sprachkritiker rezipiert. Er identifizierte sich mit der deutschen Kultur und gleichzeitig verband ihn mit den Tschechen, ihrer Kultur und Sprache die Ambivalenz einer Hassliebe, die seine Romane und Novellen, aber auch sein sprachphilosophisches Werk entscheidend prägte.

Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes setzen Mauthners Werk in Beziehung zu seinem facettenreichen Entstehungskontext. Nicht nur die hybriden linguistischen und kulturellen Lebensumstände des Autors und die Einflüsse der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen seiner Zeit wie der deutsche und tschechische Nationalismus oder der Antisemitismusstreit, sondern auch die Kontroversen um und über Mauthner werden in diesem Band neu beleuchtet und interpretiert. Vor dem Hintergrund gegenwärtiger kulturwissenschaftlicher Diskurse erscheint sein Werk mit seinen Beobachtungen zur Mischung von Sprachen und Kulturen überraschend aktuell.

Gatscher-Riedl, Gregor: Von Habsburg zu Herzl: Jüdische studentische Kultur in Mitteleuropa 1848–1948. Berndorf: Krag Verlag 2021. ISBN: 978-3-99024-954-3

 

Über dieses Buch

Der farbentragende Student mit Band und Mütze galt im deutschsprachigen Raum bis in die erste Hälfte des vorigen Jahrhunderts als idealtypische Verkörperung des akademischen Lebens, wobei die Anzahl jener Studierender, die sich keiner Korporation anschlossen, zu allen Zeiten jene der in Verbindungen organisierten Hörer überwog. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es beinahe zwangsläufig, dass das national-jüdische Selbstbewusstsein sich in studentischen Verbindungen organisierte und den Hochschulboden beanspruchte. Dieses Buch will eine Dynamik aufzeigen: War beim Engagement jüdischer Studierender zunächst das „Unsichtbarwerden“ im habsburgischen Vielvölkerstaats das Ziel, so formte sich innerhalb der nationalen Bewegungen der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts die Selbstwahrnehmung als ethnische Gruppe heraus, die sich den von Theodor Herzl vorgedachten Weg zur staatlichen Selbständigkeit zu eigen machte. Einen wesentlichen Beitrag zum zionistischen Aufbruch leisteten dazu rund 300 studentische Organisationen auf Mittel- und Hochschulebene, die in Österreich und Ungarn existierten. Sie bildeten ein vernetztes Milieu und eine Bildungslandschaft, deren verschüttete Spuren und Beitrag zur Entstehung des Staates Israel nun nachgezeichnet werden.

Anna Mader-Kratky, Nora Fischer (eds.): Schöne Wissenschaften: Sammeln, Ordnen und Präsentieren im josephinischen Wien [Beautiful Sciences: Collecting, Ordering and Presenting in josephinian Vienna]. Vienna: ÖAW 2021. ISBN13: 978-3-7001-8642-7. OPEN ACCESS

 

[Deutsch unten]

“Beautiful Sciences” focuses on the art and natural science collections under Emperor Joseph II (r. 1765-1790), and makes them the entry point for far-reaching questions about their history and the public and scientific understanding in Vienna during the Enlightenment. Going beyond the field of collections, the essays are also devoted to the initiatives which at the same time were concerned with systematizing and ordering, and provided impulses for the arrangement and presentation of the imperial collections. From the perspective of collecting, organizing, and presenting, the book explores the extent to which the Josephine collections concentrate the ideas of the Enlightenment and translate them into practice, thus making them places of knowledge and insight.

URL: https://austriaca.at/8642-7

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„Schöne Wissenschaften“ macht die kunst- und naturwissenschaftlichen Sammlungen unter Kaiser Joseph II. (reg. 1765–1790) zum Ausgangspunkt weitreichender Fragen zur Sammlungsgeschichte, zum Öffentlichkeits- und Wissenschaftsverständnis im Wien der Aufklärung. Über das Sammlungswesen hinausgehend, widmen sich die Beiträge des Buches auch den zahlreichen Initiativen, die sich zur gleichen Zeit programmatisch mit dem Verwissenschaftlichen, Systematisieren und Ordnen auseinandersetzten, und Impulse für die Ordnung und Präsentation der kaiserlichen Sammlungen lieferten. Aus Perspektive des Sammelns, Ordnens und Präsentierens wird ergründet, inwieweit die josephinischen Sammlungen die Ideen der Aufklärung bündeln, vermitteln und popularisieren, und sie so zu Wissens- und Erkenntnisorten werden.

hps.cesee global book talk: Mitchell Ash, Dorothee Brantz, Oliver Hochadel: Science in the Metropolis: Vienna in Transnational Context, 1848–1918. May 31, 17:00 CET / 18:00 MSK / 11 a.m. EST

 

The virtual platform HPS.CESEE (History of Science in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe) is proud to present its forthcoming book talk. Dorothee Brantz (Berlin) and Oliver Hochadel (Barcelona) will join Mitchell Ash (Vienna) to comment on the recent book, Science in the Metropolis: Vienna in Transnational Context, 1848–1918 (Routledge  2021), in a discussion moderated by Jan Surman (Prague).

"Science in the Metropolis: Vienna in Transnational Context, 1848–1918  presents new research on spaces for science and processes of interurban and transnational knowledge transfer and exchange in the imperial metropolis of Vienna in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chapters discuss Habsburg science policy, metropolitan natural history museums, large technical projects including the Ringstrasse and water pipelines from the Alps, urban geology, geography, public reports on polar exploration, exchanges of ethnographic objects, popular scientific societies and scientifically oriented adult education. The infrastructures and knowledge spaces described here were preconditions for the explosion of creativity known as 'Vienna 1900.'"

The meeting is free and open to the public. To receive the link, please register here:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/hpscesee-book-talk-science-in-the-metropolis-vienna-1848-1918-tickets-154413136849 or write to hps.cesee@gmail.com. 

Mitchell G. Ash is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the University of Vienna, Austria, and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities as well as the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Dorothee Brantz is Professor and Director at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technical University of Berlin. Her most recent book publication is: Urban Resilience in a Global Context: Actors, Narratives, Temporalities. Co-edited with Avi Sharma (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2020) open access: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-5018-1/urban-resilience-in-a-global-context/

Oliver Hochadel is a historian of science and a tenured researcher at the Institución Milá y Fontanals de Investigación en Humanidades (CSIC, Barcelona).

Conference: Exploiting Nature. Making an Empire: Natural Resource Extraction in Late Habsburg Empire, online/Paris 20.05.2021 - 21.05.2021

 

The conference aims at consolidating environmental history as part of the history of Habsburg Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century by exploring various forms of resource exploitation from multiple, but connected, perspectives including ecology, economy, governance and labor.

Exploiting Nature. Making an Empire: Natural Resource Extraction in Late Habsburg Empire

The contributions link environmental-historical concerns into the broader theoretical frame of imperial governance, subject-ruler relations and the expansion of capitalist structures under imperial rule. This is done by providing a platform of exchange for researchers who work on natural resource extraction in different parts of the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed diverse ecologies and positions in the world economy. The diversity of languages in which sources are available, their geographical dispersion and the differences between national historiographies make historical writing on an empire-wide scale a real challenge. For the first time, it will be possible to relate the different research results to each other and discuss them from a supra-regional perspective. Historians and environmental scientists working on the Habsburg Empire will explore multidisciplinary methods that combine environmental history of empire and human ecology. Their approaches will be discussed with Swedish scholars working on other imperial spaces. In that way the conference promotes cooperation among scholars working on imperial history and strengthens internationalization among Swedish academics.

Programm

Thursday, 20 May 2021

09:30 Introduction

Iva Lučić & Jawad Daheur

10:00 Keynote lecture

Manufacturing versus Resource Extraction. Unequal Division of Labour and Regional Shifts in Core-Periphery Relations in the Habsburg Monarchy (18/19th c.)

Andrea Komlosy – University of Vienna

11:00 Break

11:10 Panel I

Get Out of Our Forest! Rural Societies, National Mobilization, State-Building and Modern Forestry in Transylvania 1900-1940

Gábor Egry – Institute of Political History, Budapest

Imperial, Regional, and Local Regulation of Water and its Inter-Imperial Entanglements

Jana Osterkamp – Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Chair: Iva Lučić

Commentator: Margaret Hunt – University of Uppsala

12:40 Lunch Break

13:40 Panel II

The Establishment and Management of the Investment Fund of Croatian-Slavonian Military Border as an Example of the State Forest Management during the Reign of Franz Joseph I.

Robert Skenderović – History Institute, Slavonski Brod

Securing the Forests: A Relational Approach to Transborder Conflicts and Contestations in the Late Ottoman and Habsburg Empires

Selçuk Dursun – Middle East Technical University, Ankara

Chair: Jawad Daheur

Commentator: Ana Sekulić – European University Institute, Florence

15:10 Break

15:30 Panel III

Indian Mongooses in the Adriatic: Knowledge, Infrastructure and Improvement

Wolfgang Göderle – Karl Franzens University, Graz

Traditional and Innovative Agroforestry during the Late Habsburg Empire in Hungary

Anna Varga – Rachel Carson Centre, Munich

Chair: Iva Lučić

Commentator: Ségolène Plyer – University of Strasbourg

Friday, 21 May 2021

09:30 Panel IV

Was there an Interplay between Ethnic Composition, State Intervention and the Patterns of the Commodification of Timber in Forested Areas? Two Regional Examples from the Carpathians, 1890-1919

Róbert Balogh – University of Debrecen

Contested “Rights in Nature”: Practices of Forest Use Regulation in Habsburg Bosnia-Herzegovina on the Crossroad between Private Capital, Local Population, and the Imperial State

Iva Lučić – University of Uppsala

Chair: Jawad Daheur

Commentator: Pieter Judson – European University Institute, Florence

11:00 Break

11:10 Panel V

Bark Beetle and the Natural Resources Exploitation in the Böhmerwald Region (1868–1877)

Kristýna Kaucká – Masaryk Institute and Archives, Prague

Resource Governance in Time of Drought: The Struggle over Fodder Exports in Cisleithania at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Century

Jawad Daheur – Center for Russian, Caucasian and Central European Studies, Paris

Chair: Iva Lučić

Commentator: Gunnel Cederlöf – Linnaeus University, Växjö

12:40 Lunch Break

13:40 Panel VI

State versus Peasants? The Forest Transition in Late Habsburg Austria

Simone Gingrich and Martin Schmid – University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna

Chair: Jawad Daheur

Commentator: Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist – University of Stockholm

14:40 Break

15:00 Roundtable discussion: Imperial Statehood, Nature, and Private Capital

Gunnel Cederlöf – Linnaeus University, Växjö

Per Högselius – KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm

Pieter Judson – European University Institute, Florence

Moderation: Iva Lučić & Jawad Daheur

16:00 End of the conference

Contact (announcement)

Iva Lučić

iva.lucic@edu.uu.se

Jawad Daheur

jawad.daheur@ehess.fr

Opera historica. Journal of Early Modern History 21 (2020), 2, Epidemien in den habsburgischen Erbländern in der Frühen Neuzeit

 

Inhalt

Wissenschaftliche Studien

Miroslava Květová – Marie Tošnerová

Morové epidemie v českých raně novověkých městech optikou narativních pramenů

Die Pestepidemien in böhmischen frühneuzeitlichen Städten aus der Sicht der narrativen Quellen

Martin Scheutz

Göttlicher Zorn, Pestlazarette und Donauinseln. Die Wiener Pest von 1713 und die Obrigkeit

Karel Černý

Počátky variolace proti neštovicím v Evropě (1713–1721)

Die Anfänge der Variolation in Europa (1713-1721)

Andreas Weigl

Choleraepidemien in den Städten der österreichischen Alpenländer in den 1830er Jahren

Markéta Skořepová

Cholera a barokní zázraky. Epidemie roku 1832 a poutní místo Křemešník

Die Cholera und Barockwunder. Die Epidemie des Jahres 1832 und die Wallfahrtsort Křemešník

Vojtěch Kessler

„S podzimem dostavil se zlý host.“ Cholera ve válečném roce 1866 v pramenech osobní povahy

„Mit dem Herbst kam ein böser Gast.“ Die Cholera im Kriegsjahr 1866 in den Ego-Dokumenten

Editionen und Dokumente

Kateřina Pražáková

Die Beurteilung des Böhmischen Aufstands im Pamphlet vom Winter 1618/1619

URL: https://www.ceeol.com/search/journal-detail?id=2456

Helena Kokešová: Eduard Albert. Ein böhmischer Intellektueller in Wien. Wien: Böhlau Verlag 2021. ISBN: 978-3-205-21254-6, https://doi.org/10.7767/9783205212560

 

Eduard Albert (1841–1900) war Arzt und Chirurg, Hochschullehrer, Literaturkritiker, Übersetzer, Lyriker, Mäzen und Politiker und gehört zu den vielseitigsten Persönlichkeiten der tschechischen und der österreichischen Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Das Buch verfolgt alle Seiten von Alberts Leben und Wirken, seine Familie, seine Karriere in Wien, Innsbruck und Prag, das eigene literarische Schaffen und das umfangreiche Übersetzerwerk, die gesellschaftlichen Beziehungen und das Mäzenatentum. Die größte Aufmerksamkeit ist Alberts Interesse an der Politik und seiner Tätigkeit in der sogenannten tschechischen Lobby in Wien gewidmet. Weiter wird Alberts Nachleben und sein Vermächtnis in der tschechischen Gesellschaft des 20. Jahrhunderts und im österreichischen und deutschen Raum untersucht.

Franz Leander Fillafer: Aufklärung habsburgisch. Staatsbildung, Wissenskultur und Geschichtspolitik in Zentraleuropa 1750–1850. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2020. ISBN 978-3-8353-3745-9 , DOI: https://doi.org/10.46500/83533745 (OPEN ACCESS)

URL: https://www.wallstein-verlag.de/openaccess/9783835337459.pdf

Was war Aufklärung? Was war die Habsburgermonarchie? Über die Vielgestaltigkeit eines historischen Prozesses - und den durch ihn geprägten Staat.

Das Geschichtsbild der Aufklärung als Projekt der säkular-demokratischen Moderne entstand maßgeblich durch die Französische Revolution - doch es verschüttete ihre historische Vielgestaltigkeit. Franz L. Fillafer entdeckt die Aufklärung in der Habsburgermonarchie neu: Anhand ihrer Gestalter sowie der von ihnen aufgebauten Wissenskultur und Gesellschaft weist er erstmals nach, dass das Habsburgerreich während der »Restauration« kein Bollwerk gegen Aufklärung und Revolution war. Stattdessen legt Fillafer Varianten der Aufklärung frei, die nicht in der Revolution mündeten, sondern gerade im Kontext der Revolutionsabwehr gediehen. Sie speisten sich aus eigenen Quellen und prägten den Habsburgerstaat langfristig.

Indem er die Aufklärung von der Fixierung auf »radikale Ideen« aus Westeuropa und auf ihre angebliche Vollendung durch Revolution und Liberalismus löst, legt Fillafer ein Analysemodell für die europäische Aufklärung, aber auch für ihre Transformation im 19. Jahrhundert vor.

Franz L. Fillafer ist Historiker am Institut für Kulturwissenschaften und Theatergeschichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. Zuvor forschte und lehrte er in Cambridge, London, Konstanz und Florenz.

Veröffentlichungen u. a.: The Worlds of Positivism. A Global Intellectual History, 1770-1930 (Mithg., 2018); A World Connecting? From the Unity of History to Global History, (2017); Josephinismus zwischen den Regimen. Eduard Winter, Fritz Valjavec und die zentraleuropäischen Historiographien im 20. Jahrhundert (Mithg., 2016).

Online event: Franz L. Fillafer (Austrian Academy of Sciences), “Empire of Circulation: Habsburg Knowledge in its Global Settings” , Col·loquis de la SCHCT (2020 – 2021), Series: Global History of Science Seminar, Thursday 18 March 2021, 18.30h (CET)

   

Abstract: The historical profession is abuzz with studies of "circulation" and "interaction", yet the conceptual purchase and difficulties of these enticing terms remain ill-explored. My paper seeks to sound out the benefits this novel perspective promises: It permits us to situate the study of Habsburg Central Europe afresh in global history, and in doing so promotes a better understanding of each.     

 

Franz L. Fillafer is a historian of Europe in its global entanglements whose research so far has chiefly focused on the Enlightenment and its posterities, as well as on the Habsburg Empire and its successor states. Recent publications include: Aufklärung habsburgisch: Staatsbildung, Wissenskultur und Geschichtspolitik in Zentraleuropa, 1750–1850, Göttingen 2020; “Imperial Diversity, Fractured Sovereignty, and Legal Universals: Hans Kelsen and Eugen Ehrlich in their Habsburg Context,” Modern Intellectual History 18 (2021); The Worlds of Positivism: A Global Intellectual History, 1770–1930 (ed. with Johannes Feichtinger and Jan Surman), New York 2018; "A World Connecting? From the Unity of History to Global History," History and Theory 56 (2017), 3–37.    

 

Organizers: Oliver Hochadel (IMF-CSIC), Daniele Cozzoli (UPF) i Agustí Nieto-Galan (UAB).  With the  Catalan Society for the History of Science and Technology

online: via Teams <https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_Yzc0Y2M0ZGUtMWVkYi00ZjBjLWE4MjgtOWVhYjlkMzBjMmU3%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%226b514c29-2391-4831-b774-84f35c45bf01%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2248de7f35-3d29-4c69-a459-d8e2709c78f8%22%7d>* 

 

Complete Link 

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_Yzc0Y2M0ZGUtMWVkYi00ZjBjLWE4MjgtOWVhYjlkMzBjMmU3%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%226b514c29-2391-4831-b774-84f35c45bf01%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2248de7f35-3d29-4c69-a459-d8e2709c78f8%22%7d <https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_Yzc0Y2M0ZGUtMWVkYi00ZjBjLWE4MjgtOWVhYjlkMzBjMmU3%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%226b514c29-2391-4831-b774-84f35c45bf01%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2248de7f35-3d29-4c69-a459-d8e2709c78f8%22%7d> 

Opera historica 2020, Nr. 2: Epidemics in the Habsburg Hereditary Lands (OPEN ACCESS)

URL: https://www.opera-historica.com/2020/opera-historica-21-2020-2/

OBSAH / CONTENTS

Obsah/Contents

EPIDEMICS IN THE HABSBURG HEREDITARY LANDS (1500-1918)

Introduction – Zum Geleit (CZ/DE)

Editorial board  

Plague epidemics in early modern Bohemian towns as seen through the lens of narrative sources (CZ)

Miroslava Květová 

Anger of God, plague lazarettes and Danube islands. The Vienna plague of 1713 and the authorities (DE)

Martin Scheutz 

The beginnings of variolation against smallpox in Europe (1713–1721) (CZ)

Karel Černý 

Cholera epidemics in Austrian cities in the 1830s (DE) 

Andreas Weigl 

Cholera and baroque miracles: the epidemic of 1832 and the pilgrimage site of Křemešník (CZ)

Markéta Skořepová 

“An evil guest arrived in the autumn.” Cholera in the war year 1866 in sources of personal nature (CZ)

Vojtěch Kessler 

EDITIONS AND DOCUMENTS

An Assessment of the Bohemian Rebellion in a Pamphlet from the Winter of 1618/1619 (DE) 

Kateřina Pražáková  Read full article in PDF

Abstract

REVIEWS (CZ)

WHAT IS NEW IN EARLY MODERN STUDIES (CZ)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bibliographie zur Geschichte der Epidemien in den habsburgischen Erbländern (1500-1918)

Ivo Cerman – 

AUTOŘI / ABOUT AUTHORS

Autoři/About authors

Peter Becker and Natasha Wheatley (eds): Remaking Central Europe: The League of Nations and the Former Habsburg Lands. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2021. ISBN: 9780198854685

 

A key study of the 1919 new international order in Central Europe, showing how the former Habsburg lands served as a key crucible for international order and supranational governance between the two World Wars

Analyzes the afterlife of the Habsburg empire in international history, offering new insights and directions for Central European history beyond the history of nation-states

A pioneering regional approach to international history, examining differences between national, regional, and international orders to reveal new problems and histories

Description

Over the last two decades, the "new international order" of 1919 has grown into an expansive new area of research across multiple disciplines. With the League of Nations at its heart, the interwar settlement's innovations in international organizations, international law, and many other areas shaped the world we know today.

This book presents the first study of the relationship between this new international order and the new regional order in Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Habsburg empire. An analysis of the co-implication of these two orders is grounded in four key scholarly interventions: understanding the legacies of empire in international organizations; examining regionalism in the work of interwar international institutions; creating an integrated history of the interwar order in Europe; and testing recent claims of the conceptual connection between nationalism and internationalism.

With chapters covering international health, international financial oversight, human trafficking, minority rights, scientific networks, technical expertise, passports, commercial treaties, borders and citizenship, and international policing, this book pioneers a regional approach to international order, and explores the origins of today's global governance in the wake of imperial collapse.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Central Europe and the New International Order of 1919, Peter Becker and Natasha Wheatley

1. Habsburg Histories of Internationalism, Glenda Sluga

Part One: Remaking Actors and Networks

2. Clemens Pirquet: Early Twentieth-Century Scientific Networks, the Austrian Hunger Crisis, and the Making of the International Food Expert, Michael Burri

3. Reinventing International Health in East Central Europe: The League of Nations, State Sovereignty, and Universal Health, Sara Silverstein

4. The Polycentric Remaking of International Participation after World War I: (Post-)Imperial Agents from Eastern Europe in and around the League of Nations' Secretariat, Katja Naumann

5. Austria, the League of Nations, and the Birth of Multilateral Financial Control, Nathan Marcus

6. Hungary and the League of Nations: A Forced Marriage, Zoltan Peterecz

7. On the Fraught Internationalism of Intellectuals: Alfons Dopsch, Austria, and the League's Intellectual Cooperation Program, Johannes Feichtinger

Part Two: Remaking Territories and Borders

8. Remaking Mobility: International Conferences and the Emergence of the Modern Passport System, Peter Becker

9. International Commerce in the Wake of Empire: Central European Economic Integration between National and Imperial Sovereignty, Madeleine Lynch Dungy

10. Fighting the Scourge of International Crime: The Internationalisation of Policing and Criminal Law in Interwar Europe, David Petruccelli

11. Nation, Internationalism, and the Policies against Trafficking in Girls and Women after the Fall of the Habsburg Empire, Martina Steer

12. The League of Nations and the Optants Disputes of the Hungarian Borderlands: Romania, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, Antal Berkes

13. Non-Territorial Autonomy in Interwar European Minority Protection and Its Habsburg Legacies, Börries Kuzmany

14. Beyond the League of Nations: Public Debates on International Relations in Czechoslovakia during the Interwar Period, Sarah Lemmen

An Epilogue to the Making and Unmaking of Central Europe and Global Order, Patricia Clavin

Peter Becker is Professor of Austrian History in the Department of History at the University of Vienna. Before moving to Vienna, he held a professorship at the European University Institute in Florence, where he started his research on the history of modern state and governance especially of the Habsburg monarchy and on the cultural history of public administration.

Natasha Wheatley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Princeton University. Prior to joining the Princeton faculty, she completed her PhD at Columbia University and was an ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sydney.