Stadt und Öffentlichkeit in Ostmitteleuropa 1900-1930. Beiträge zur Entstehung moderner Urbanität zwischen Berlin, Charkiv, Tallin und Triest by A. R. Hofmann A. V. Wendland (review)

Abstract

568 SEER, 8i, 3, 2003 Riga was also geographically closer to Southern Estonians than Tallinn and hence an obvious destination point in search for employment. Mela's main focus is thus justifiably on Riga, although other Latvian regions are also included in her study. Valka and Aluksne had and still have considerable EstonianpopulationsbesidesRiga. Statisticalmaterialsfrom the nineteenth century and the firstRepublic of Latvia are few, but Mela manages to support her qualitative analysis with demographic data. Her major interest is Estonian ethnic identity and its maintenance and thus she concentratesmost extensively on culturalsocieties and education as the major vehicles of ethnic identity. The study presents a comprehensive overview of the history and the activities of the Estonian Society in Riga, the Estonian Temperance Society, Estonian students' societies, and the Riga EstonianSchool. It is slightly disappointing that only four pages are dedicated to Estonians in Latvia during the Soviet times. The Soviet regime suffocated ethnic awarenessand minoritymovements, but mechanismsof identitymaintenance at that time, probably in the form of oral histories,would have constituted a particularlyinterestingavenue of researchfor thisstudy. The culturalactivitiesof the Estonianminorityhave increasedsince Latvia regained independence in I99I. The Estonian Society was re-establishedin I988 and the Riga Estonian School in I989. They workagainstthe complete assimilationof Estonians in Latvia, but as Mela concludes, Latvia today is so multiculturalthat it seems a hopeless project.Although Estonian culture and identity is more easily maintained in Riga than in rural areas, Estonians in contemporaryLatvia, as in the firstRepublic, do not enjoy either culturalor linguistic minority rights, and Estonian culture has no particularpolitical or social statusin Latvia. As a consequence, Estonians in contemporary Latvia (2,677 persons in 2000, of whom i,O24 live in Riga) are a very rapidly assimilating ethnic minority. Mixed marriagesare common and the culturaldifferencesbetween Latvians and Estonians, over and above language, are insignificant. Only elderlypeople stillspeakEstonianfluently;in contemporarymixed marriages children tend to speak Latvian or Russian. This study, although adding a valuablecontributionto researchon Latvia'smultiethnicsocietyandEstonian diasporasin the world, might actuallyalreadybe too late to raiseawarenessof a distinctEstonianminorityin Latvia. Department ofPublic Administration ToOMASGROSS Universit) ofTartu Hofmann, A. R. and Wendland, A. V. (eds). Stadt und Offentlichkeitin Ostmitteleuropa I900-1930. Beitrdge zurEntstehung moderner Urbanitdt zwischen Berlin, Charkiv, Tallin und Triest. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Kultur des ostlichen Mitteleuropa, 14. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart, 2002. 308 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Index. ?58.oo. THE present anthology, which encompasses fifteen contributions on the three central topics 'architecture', 'urban culture' and 'societies and the press', was REVIEWS 569 gleaned from an interdisciplinary conference of the Leipzig Centre of Humanities for East-CentralEuropeanCultureand History inJanuary 2000. The centraltermof an urbanpublicyieldsan extraordinarilywide framework, within which a greatvariety of differentphenomena are discussedsuch as the function of the media and of associations,the evolution of a public of experts, linguistic data as well as a 'culinary commercial public' (Hartmut Hauflermann ).As employed in the preface,thephraseologyof 'pragmaticeclecticism' almost appearsto be a strokeof genius and would have servedas a subtitleto this anthology aswell. Reconstructing a nationally loaded trial on slander in the Lemberg of the 1930s, A. V. Wendlandparticularizesin her outstandingcontributionon the 'cultureof memory' (Erinnerungskultur) that the public cannotpersebe equated with openness and transparency. The public as an arena of partially institutionalizednational confrontationis also discussedby A. Fullberthin his outline on city planning in the Baltic States. Taking Riga as an example, he highlights the overlapping of ethnic and social categories, which is often considered typical of East-Central Europe. In fact, this observation also appliesto severalother contributionsonJewish UkrainianLemberg. S. Ruter takes a considerably different view in her essay on workers' cultural associations in Trieste in the period before 1914. According to Ruter, social affiliationcounteracted the development of nationallydefined boundariesfor a long time between Italians,Slovenes and Germans. A numberof authorsmakeuse of a comparativeapproach.In two excellent contributions, Kozinska-Witt compares the role of staged public festivities with the influenceof the pressin Cracow and Warsaw.On the one hand, both capitalsreceived new functionsand tasksforthe whole nation, not to mention certain stereotypes, in the aftermath of the resurrectionof Poland. On the other hand, the apparent turning-point-likecharacter of the alleged epochmakingyear I9 I8 proved only weakly developed. In view of the correspondence of Kozinska-Witt's contributions there is reason to hope that, once followeddown...