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Ethnic฀Identity,฀Group฀Solidarity,฀and฀Historical฀Change฀฀฀฀฀฀฀◆฀฀฀฀฀฀฀201 201 CO N C LU S I O N Ethnic฀Identity,฀Group฀฀ Solidarity,฀and฀Historical฀Change The history of Prague demonstrates how the German-speaking urban elites in Austria’s linguistically mixed territories developed ethnic identity and group solidarity during the nineteenth century. Previously, most of the cities and larger towns in the Czech and Slovene areas had a corporate social structure dominated by German-speakers drawn from the assimilation of upwardly mobile Czech- and Slovene-speakers, pockets of long-resident German-speakers, and migrants from Austria’s Alpine lands and foreign territories. High status and the Austro-German acculturation that accompanied social rank set the German-speaking elites apart from the rest of the local residents. The experience of the Prague Germans indicates that the German-speaking middle and upper strata only transformed themselves into self-conscious German groups, distinguished by an articulated sense of German ethnicity and exclusive social relations, in response to demands for power and social standing by their Czech- or Slovene-speaking neighbors. Viewed broadly, both sides forged their group loyalties and aspirations in the course of the competition for political and economic advantage in a changing social environment. Such a pattern of developing ethnicity in the mixed cities argues against a view of ethnic and national divisions as simple constants in nineteenth-century Austria. In Prague and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, popular ethnic and national group loyalties were created over the course of the nineteenth century. Those group loyalties were often supported and encouraged by significant social differences, be they differing legal positions, specific political and economic privileges, or varying occupational profiles. The privileged position of the German -speaking urban elites in many of the Habsburg crown lands inherited from the early modern era gave them something to defend when they were challenged during the nineteenth century by new political movements in the majority populations that demanded an end to their subordination, creating their own modern ethnic and national group consciousness in the process. Rather than affecting all other social and political conflicts as a sort of “first cause,” conscious ethnic loyalties 202฀฀฀฀฀฀฀◆฀฀฀฀฀฀฀CONCLUSION and group solidarities were themselves historically constructed and conditioned on all sides. In a linguistically and religiously mixed city like Prague, conscious ethnic group loyalties and ethnic and national conflicts grew directly out of the evolution of a modern class structure from a society of ranks and orders and the development of, first, deferential and then, later, mass politics.1 At base, German-speakers in Prague created a German identity and group solidarity after 1848 in reaction to the Czech nationalist challenge to their dominance. The sense of German group affiliation and loyalty, like that of the Czechs, emerged as part of efforts to deal with political and social developments that presented threats as well as potential opportunities for the German-speakers’ common interests. The new sense of German or Czech group solidarity carried with it a sense of citizenship and claims to participation in a nationally defined civil society that was very different from the affiliations and allegiances to status group, local community, and territorial state that characterized life in the old corporate social structure of early modern Central Europe. Nationalists on all sides liked to project back on the early modern era supposed collective memories of a prior separate group existence and shared attachments to distinctive popular customs, a separate group lineage, and a home territory. In cities like Prague, however, the German-speakers who were present in the mid-nineteenth century had diverse origins and most had lived on close terms with Czech-speakers for too long for them to claim that a distinct lineage or group culture qua Germans already separated them from their Czech neighbors. German-speakers in Transylvania and some other parts of the Kingdom of Hungary had specific historic memories of group migration from German-speaking territories, but the urban German-speaking minorities in Habsburg cities like Prague had no real sense of belonging to a German diaspora. In the consciousness of the Prague Germans, the Kingdom of Bohemia and its capital city were their historic home. Even after ethnic differences widened during the late nineteenth century, Germans and Slavs inAustria’s mixed cities still shared much more in modes of life, popular values, and day-to-day social relations than dedicated nationalists cared to admit. Some upper-middle-class Germans in Prague might...

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