Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European Experience ed. by Johannes Feichtinger and Gary Cohen (review)

Multiculturalism is the core of the Habsburg monarchy’s appeal to students of history, cultural studies, literature, linguistics, and politics. The monarchy’s diversity often is used as a test case for theories about multiethnic societies across the world, and it is often cited as a precursor for European integration. Multiculturalism is also the focus for a significant percentage of the scholarship on the monarchy and its successor states. Some of this scholarship uses the monarchy to appeal to a bygone era of peaceful multiethnic coexistence lost due to whatever factor is the bogeyman of the day. The benefits of Habsburg multiculturalism and integration have been touted by scholars like Alan Sked and David Good, to a statesman like Otto von Habsburg. These benefits of multiculturalism in the Habsburg monarchy were, of course, extremely mixed. Scholarship in the last few decades, led in part by Gary Cohen, has emphasized the contentious and contested nature of multiculturalism. Emphasizing the potential disadvantages and dangers of multiculturalism, Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European Experience is an excellent primer on Habsburg society and is highly recommended for students of the monarchy as well as multicultural societies in general. Bringing new insights to the issues of identity creation, multiethnic politics, memory, language use, and personal representation, Understanding Multiculturalism is a useful critique of multiculturalism in the Habsburg monarchy and its successors.

Understanding Multiculturalism, a collection of essays resulting from a group research project entitled “Multiculturalism: The Central European Experience and Its Impact on Identity Formation in a Globalized World” and edited by Johannes Feichtinger and Gary Cohen, is the latest examination of the discourse around East Central Europe’s defining characteristic. Feichtinger and Cohen point to recent scholarship to illustrate the ambivalent nature of multicultural societies. They argue that multiculturalism can not only bring cultural exchange but also oppression, unjust social practices, and an othering of minority groups. It is often used to perpetuate or allow unjust social practices and power imbalances. When multiculturalism is used to preserve the power of a majority group or create artificial barriers between communities, it is counterproductive to the healthy functioning of society. Even within the most integrated and supranational institutions of the Habsburg monarchy, army, and bureaucracy, nationality often determined the role, associations, and expectation of soldiers, officers, and bureaucrats. Idealized Habsburg multiculturalism was often very militarized and rigid, with German-speaking officers dispensing instruction and correction to the various subdivided, regimented peoples.

As is common with collections of essays, the authors of Understanding Multiculturalism have chosen widely disparate topics, but the book is held together well with a common objective of reevaluating nation-based descriptions of identity. Sections address topics including identity formation, state and political dynamics, and identity expression within multicultural societies. The bulk of the work focuses on the Habsburg monarchy and its successor states, with excellent essays by Pieter Judson on nationalist frontiers in rural Austria in the late Habsburg era; Michael John on migration in Austria during the twentieth century, and Patrice Dabrowski on interwar Poland. As is common for these topical collections, the geographic and intellectual focus stretches profitably, as in Michael Rössinger’s examination of the cultural memory of Europe among Latin Americans and Moritz Csáky’s discussion of cultural studies. There are also more focused micro-histories of locations, people, and practices. Individuals illustrate the flexibility of ethnic boundaries, particularly within imperial institutions like the army. By way of illustration, Oto Luthar provides an example of a Slovenian noncommissioned officer who wrote his diary in Slovene when referring to home, German when discussing official matters, and, oddly enough, Hungarian when writing about his sexual fantasies. Examples such as this illustrate the fluidity of language and culture even within individuals.

Understanding Multiculturalism’s critique of multiculturalism fits well with books like Cohen’s Politics of Ethnic Survival or Tara Zahra’s Kidnapped Souls. Cohen, Zahra, and others have shown...