Was There a “Habsburg Society” in Austria-Hungary?

Abstract

Was there a sensein which there existed a single, integrated society under the Habsburg monarchy–what we might call “Habsburg society,” or even “Austro-Hungarian society,” in the same way we talk of “American,” “French,” or “German” society? Anyone seeking to answer this question stands in a long, continuous line of historical and sociological discussion that reaches back at least to the era before the 1848 revolutions, when Victor Freiherr von Andrian-Werburg diagnosed with great clarity the emergence of different, language-based nations in the Austrian Empire. Andrian-Werburg spoke of a process of separation and felt that an awakening of “Austrian” national feeling was lacking. Naturally, Robert A. Kann also occupies a prominent position within this historical debate. Unfortunately, the present writer cannot claim to have been closely acquainted with Kann. Nor did I belong, unlike Karlheinz Mack, Horst Haselsteiner, and Arnold Suppan, to the circle of his card partners– Kann was a passionate and skillful player of Tarock, a card game popular in Central Europe. I can only recall one brief meeting, when Kann once came to our Institute of Economic and Social History in Vienna to look for some statistical works on the theme that he was researching. At the time, it seemed remarkable to me that such a great scholar, who was then at a fairly advanced age, should still be seeking out original, basic information. That was a typical mistake for an academic greenhorn to make, for I had yet to realize that, for certain historical problems, it is sometimes necessary to go back to the same sources to ask new questions of them and to analyze them with new methods. But let us turn back to our subject for today.