Language Diversity in the Late Habsburg Empire

The Habsburg Empire often features in scholarship as a historical example of how language diversity and linguistic competence were essential to the functioning of the imperial state. Focusing critically on the urban-rural divide, on the importance of status for multilingual competence, on local governments, schools, the army and the urban public sphere, and on linguistic policies and practices in transition, this collective volume provides further evidence for both the merits of how language diversity was managed in Austria-Hungary and the problems and contradictions that surrounded those practices.

The book includes contributions by Pieter M. Judson, Marta Verginella, Rok Stergar, Anamarija Lukic, Carl Bethke, Irina Marin, Ágoston Berecz, Csilla Fedinec, István Csernicskó, Matthäus Wehowski, Jan Fellerer, and Jeroen van Drunen.

Markian Prokopovych, Ph.D. (2005), Habil. (2011), Durham University, is the author of Habsburg Lemberg: Architecture, Public Space and Politics in the Galician Capital, 1772-1914 (2009) and In the Public Eye: The Budapest Opera House, the Audience and the Press, 1884-1918 (2014). Carl Bethke, Ph.D. (2006), University of Leipzig, is the author of (K)Eine gemeinsame Sprache? Aspekte deutsch-jüdischer Beziehungsgeschichte in Kroatien. Vom Zusammenleben zum Holocaust, 1900-1945 (2013) and Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten in Kroatien und der Vojvodina 1918-1941: Identitätsentwürfe und ethnopolitische Mobilisierung (2009). Tamara Scheer, Ph.D. (2007), University of Vienna, is the author of many articles and monographs on the late Habsburg Monarchy focusing on language diversity, identities and loyalties and the Habsburg monarchy’s engagement in South Eastern Europe.