ARTICLE ALERT: European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire issue: Habsburg Home Fronts during the Great War

Jim Brown Discussion

European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire, Volume 24, Issue 2, April 2017.

Habsburg Home Fronts during the Great War

Healy, Maureen. Introductory remarks: space, chronology and the Habsburg home fronts. European Review Of History: Revue Européenne D'histoire. Vol. 24, Iss. 2,2017. Pp. 171-179.

Abstract
These introductory remarks suggest that we reconsider two lines typically used to conceptualize the Habsburg war experience. One is the imagined line separating front and home front. “Spaces of war” is suggested as an alternative. Second, based on a case study of Vienna, they question the stability of the chronological line, drawn in November 1918, dividing “war” from “post-war.”

Scheer, Tamara & Wingfield, Nancy M. Habsburg home fronts during the Great War. European Review Of History: Revue Européenne D'histoire. Vol. 24, Iss. 2,2017. Pp. 180-184.

 

Livio, Alessandro. The wartime treatment of the Italian-speaking population in Austria-Hungary. European Review Of History: Revue Européenne D'histoire. Vol. 24, Iss. 2,2017. Pp. 185-199.

Abstract
During the First World War the military and civil authorities of Austria-Hungary employed a variety of means to carry out mobilization and army operations successfully. The system of emergency laws that had been drawn up before 1914 was introduced into the Monarchy at the war's outset by imposing a state of emergency and suspending the fundamental civil rights. A special authority, the War Surveillance Office, based in Vienna and comprising a number of ministerial officials, was set up to control and coordinate the execution of the emergency measures for the duration of the conflict. Concerns about national tensions, open resistance, interference, and sabotage by socialist and national agitators provided the government and military an excuse to focus their attention on “internal enemies.” Enemy aliens and politically suspect citizens were forcibly deported into internment camps, or exiled to remote parts of the Monarchy. This article analyses the treatment of the Italian-speaking population of Trentino and Littoral during the war. Military authorities considered the internment of and/or exile measures against these politically suspect nationals appropriate and effective instruments to fight irredentism. Owing to their exaggerated fears of the irredentist threat, the military authorities arrested and interned large numbers of people, most of whom posed no threat to the Monarchy. Their “crimes” included, for example, belonging to national associations and having contacts with “unreliable persons.” The military's repressive behavior in Trentino and Littoral contributed to the diminution of Italian speakers' loyalty to the Monarchy.

 

Haid, Elisabeth. Galicia: a bulwark against Russia? Propaganda and violence in a border region during the First World War. European Review Of History: Revue Européenne D'histoire. Vol. 24, Iss. 2,2017. Pp. 200-213.

Abstract
The mobilization of the Galician home front was of particular importance for the Habsburg monarchy because of the strategic importance of this province during the First World War. The aim of this article is to take a closer look at the diverse political measures of the Habsburg political and military authorities in Galicia, which were often inconsistent with one another. It deals with propaganda as well as with oppressive measures and discriminatory policy towards certain nationalities. It argues that the political situation in Galicia, which was a national trouble spot in the decades before the First World War, as well as the fact that the province was a war zone, influenced these measures. Moreover, the article demonstrates the contribution of Galician protagonists both to the propagandistic mobilization for war and to the acts of violence. The article argues that the mobilization of the Galician home front was a failure. The propaganda efforts contrasted strongly with the brutal measures of the Austro-Hungarian army and with the growing national conflicts in Galicia. Instead of strengthening a sense of community in view of the common enemy, the war rather alienated the different Galician population groups from each other, but also from the Austrian state.

 

Scheer, Tamara. Denunciation and the decline of the Habsburg home front during the First World War. European Review Of History: Revue Européenne D'histoire. Vol. 24, Iss. 2,2017. Pp. 214-228.

Abstract
Nationalism played a role in almost all cases of denunciation that occurred in the Habsburg Monarchy during the First World War. But nationalism was never the only motive behind denunciation and the basis for decisions made by state authorities. Accusations were also influenced by the wartime food shortages, pre-war animosities and prejudices as well as conflicts among different social classes, religious groups, and political ideologies. Nevertheless, almost all denouncers mentioned nationality to stress the importance of their information. This paper examines the work of the Habsburg War Surveillance Office, which was responsible for dealing with denunciation in wartime Austria-Hungary. It investigates this institution’s reaction to cases of denunciation from across the Habsburg Monarchy and to which extent nationalities questions played a role. Although according to the Austrian constitution all languages were to be treated equally, the War Surveillance Office treated German-language denunciations more seriously than those in other languages, so non-German-speakers also wrote their denunciations in German.

 

Schmitner, Sabine. Local politics during the First World War: political players in the armaments center Wiener Neustadt. European Review Of History: Revue Européenne D'histoire. Vol. 24, Iss. 2,2017. Pp. 229-249.

Abstract
This article focuses on the interdependencies between local political activities and war order. Did the state of emergency and other legal aspects of war order open a space of total power for the state? Based on the experience of the Austrian Armaments Centre Wiener Neustadt, the author argues that local politicians as important mediators between state and townspeople possessed power too. As formal political players and local authorities, they played an important role in establishing and keeping up the war order in terms of administration and morality. Three political parties sent out politicians to serve as members of the local council: Deutschnationale (German Nationals), Sozialdemokraten (Social Democrats) and Christlichsoziale (Christian Socials). As members of the local council, the politicians concentrated on organizing town life during war. As party-political players, they followed their party-political agendas. By aligning with the government’s war order, the three parties were able to make the First World War “their” war. Based on the perspective of governmentality understood as organized practices by which people are governed, this paper analyzes how Party Political Discourses produced and reproduced ideas of war and how to behave during war, as well as how social structures and spaces supported party political positioning.

 

Rigó, Máté. The Long First World War and the survival of business elites in East-Central Europe: Transylvania’s industrial boom and the enrichment of economic elites. European Review Of History: Revue Européenne D'histoire. Vol. 24, Iss. 2,2017. Pp. 250-272.

Abstract
This article explores one often-overlooked consequence and paradox of the First World War: the prosperity of business elites and bankers in service of the war effort, despite the destruction of capital and wealth by belligerent armies. Wartime destruction and the birth of “war millionaires” were two sides of the same coin. Through following the rapid wartime expansion of the Renner tannery in Kolozsvár/Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania, the article explores the repercussions of wartime prosperity, including the takeover of the family business by large corporations and increasing dependence on army commissions. Whereas 1918 is often portrayed as a radical break in the history of East-Central Europe, this article explores why the Renner corporation, owned by ethnic Germans and Magyars, managed to remain prosperous even after Romania annexed Transylvania in December 1918. The increasing ethnic mobilization and hostilities between Magyar and Romanian nationalist elites did not directly impact Transylvania’s business life during and after the First World War. The author investigates why Magyar, Hungarian Jewish and German bankers and industrialists were successful at cementing their pre-war and wartime social positions and economic influence in Greater Romania.

 

Walleczek-Fritz, Julia. The social degeneration of the Habsburg home front: “forbidden intercourse” and POWs during the First World War. European Review Of History: Revue Européenne D'histoire. Vol. 24, Iss. 2,2017. Pp. 273-287.

Abstract
The belligerent states captured between eight and nine million soldiers during the First World War, among them the approximately two million men in the hands of the Austro-Hungarian Gewahrsamsstaat. This article discusses how POWs’ forced labor outside the camps brought them into close contact with Austrian civilians, especially women. These relationships were condemned as “forbidden intercourse.” I address the Austro-Hungarian administration of POWs and the “spaces of war” in which they were used for forced labor as well as whether prisoners can be classified as “military migrants” in Austria within the framework of their forced migration. This article examines women’s perspectives and their motives, as well as the stigmatization and instrumentalization of their bodies by the public, demonstrating how the concept(s) of the “Enemy” changed during the course of the war, thus helping to destabilize Austro-Hungarian spaces of war. It analyzes the varied processes of cultural transfers, fraternization, and integration of POWs, showing how this development affected military authorities and civilian administration and the measures that those in charge implemented in order to re-discipline and re-stabilize the Habsburg system.

 

Zaharia, Ionela. For God and/or emperor: Habsburg Romanian military chaplains and wartime propaganda in camps for returning POWs. European Review Of History: Revue Européenne D'histoire. Vol. 24, Iss. 2,2017. Pp. 288-304.

Abstract
Austro-Hungarian authorities employed censorship and propaganda throughout the war to keep the soldiers on the fronts as well as the civilians at home optimistic and loyal. Nevertheless, exchange of information between the front and the home front occurred. By the end of 1917, a new element was added to information exchange. Thousands of former POWs began returning from Russian camps. To prevent the spread of revolutionary Bolshevik ideas among the Habsburg civilian population and in the army, the Ministry of War and the Army High Command created a department responsible for the returning soldiers, the Heimkehrwesen. Habsburg Romanian military chaplains were among those officials who examined the returning soldiers’ physical and mental condition. Soldiers needed a “positive” evaluation before they were permitted to return home or were sent to the fighting front. This article analyzes how the Romanian military chaplains coped with this secular duty in addition to their pastoral obligations. The priests were more successful in acquainting the soldiers, mostly of peasant background, with theology, than with gaining and regaining support for and loyalty to the emperor and monarchy through subtle propaganda. Partial explanations for their failure: the emperor and the Fatherland were no longer considered symbols of security, peace and well-being.

 

Densford, Kathryn E. The Wehrmann in Eisen: nailed statues as barometers of Habsburg social order during the First World War. European Review Of History: Revue Européenne D'histoire. Vol. 24, Iss. 2,2017. Pp. 305-324.

Abstract
Beginning in early 1915, large nailed statues appeared across Austria-Hungary. These statues, which were carved of wood and covered in nails, took different forms. The most common was a shield or medieval knight, the Wehrmann in Eisen. Often placed in prominent public spaces, these statues became focal points for ceremonies aimed at uniting the local population in support of the Habsburg war effort. The rhetoric concerning these statues, used by officials in unveiling ceremonies and reproduced in newspapers, reinforced notions of wartime sacrifice expected of all citizens. This paper examines these nailed statues in both halves of the Dual Monarchy, arguing that these statues served an important function in the Habsburg wartime project to promote widespread patriotism and in the process upheld traditional gendered social order. Ultimately, these nailed statues and the events that took place at them exemplify efforts by those in positions of authority to maintain traditional gendered social order in wartime through this symbol of male battlefront sacrifice. The varied afterlives of these statues indicate the degree to which the statues failed to unite the Monarchy around a common Habsburg wartime project and were subject to use for political ends in the successor states.