Austro-Hungarian Press on the Resistance of the Transylvanian Saxons against the Toponyms Law IV/1898

Abstract

The problem of ethnic Germans dispersed among other peoples (the Hungarians, Romanians, Serbs, Slovaks, and Czechs) on the territories of different historical regions of Austro-Hungary, was one among many national questions in the “patchwork” monarchy of the Habsburgs. Divided in separated communes, which had been established at different times and had different levels of solidarity and self-consciousness, they faced a variety of contradictions. They were between two halves of the monarchy, between the core and the periphery, between one of the politically dominant nationalities of the state and all the others, between the bigger and smaller ethnic groups of a region, and even between Austro-Hungary and Germany. One such commune with a developed regional identity and high level of social and political activity, the Transylvanian Saxons, took the unifying language policy of Budapest as a challenge. Their attempts to prevent the enactment of the Toponyms Law IV/1898 revealed the wide spread of negative attitudes towards the Hungarian government among the Saxons. They had such an attitude in common with many social forces of the dual monarchy. The attention of various periodicals to the protests confirms such a conclusion. Using Saxon periodicals, the article examines and compares the perception of the Saxon reaction to the new law with that of the Slovaks, the Czechs and Germans from the Bohemian Crown Lands, and the liberal circles of the state capitals. The Slovaks were also affected by the Toponyms Law, and Germans from the Bohemian Crown lands lived with contradictions very similar to those experienced by the Saxons. At the same time, metropolitan liberal circles were politically dominant. Such a comparison reveals a degree of understanding of the similarities and differences between the national questions in different regions of Austro-Hungary by contemporaries and in the ways the same news was discussed in various periodicals. It also enriches our knowledge about the complexion of social and political life in the Habsburg monarchy at the turn of the century.