How was life in Austria-Hungary for it's diferent nationalities?
How was life in Austria-Hungary for it's diferent nationalities?
Logan Campbell
Bentley Anderson
Shit. That's why every small nation rebelled against the empire, and let's not forget that it was Hungary's fault.
Grayson Martin
Interestingly enough, life for minorities in Austria-Hungary was better than in the German or Russian Empires. Poles, Jews, Czechs, etc. lived better than their counterpart minorities in Russia or Germany. Jews were treated decently in Germany but absolutely terrible in Russia while Poles were treated abysmally in both Germany and Russia.
The main reason was because all the revolts in the 2nd half of the 19th century terrified the Habsburg to the point that they thought if they satisfied minorities enough they wouldn't rebel.
Ethan Taylor
>implying Austrians wanted to give autonomy to Slavs
No one in power except for Franz Ferdinand wanted to do that. Austria also feared that if they give Slavs any power they will be annexed by Russia because of panslavism.
Lincoln Jackson
Not autonomy, but equal rights. The slavs , the romanians and even the transilvanian saxons were still second hand citizens and were constantly revolting. The hungarians strongly opposed giving rights to them , and thus this is why every nation in the empire( except the austrians and the hungarians) rebelled.The assasination of the archduke was the spark in a barrel of gunpowder.
Oliver Stewart
>this is why every nation in the empire( except the austrians and the hungarians) rebelled
Name one rebellion. I can name at least 3 Hungarian ones.
Easton Ramirez
Jace Johnson
Under Austria - good, under Hungary - bad.
t. Croat
Gabriel Ward
It was generally very good with exceptions in areas of Galicia and Slovakia.
Contrary to popular belief most commoners were happy with the empire and viewed the state as their representative against local aristocracy who was exploiting them in areas of Hungary in particular.
Rather than blaming Obongo or t he EU most saw the empire working for them. Literacy was high and the economy was good with the empire creating a niche for most areas or working towards that goal.
There were nationalist forces and a small group of influential nationalists were successful in breaking apart the empire with most people too hungry or dead to make a real stand after chaos set in.
There are STILL towns in Poland that have a parade for the Kaiser.
It was a good state for education and culture. Not military though
Easton Fisher
Not nationalist in origin
Asher Stewart
Yeah, because transilvanian romanians /saxons wanted to free themselves from the austrians and get under the magyar boot.
Cameron Lee
>It was a good state for education and culture
That's true. But in the romanian case, the minorities were so mistreated by the hungarians that even the saxons and the swabians chose the union with Romania instead of remaining under magyar control.The situation might of been decent in Austria /Slovenia , but in Transilvania and Serbia is was horrific.
Aaron Price
Romanians in Transylvania were forced to speak Hungarian etc for a while but it didn't work out. They didn't really identify with the Romanian state until Romanians worked via Versailles to and with military force to make it happen. It wasn't a grass roots Democratic episode.
These Romanians in AH looked to Kaiser and Empire to tell Hungary to stop not to Romania or independence.
Most Nationalists such as the Czech Nationalists socialists and even Adolf Hitler were vying for Czech autonomy on par with Hungary or in Hitlers case German control of the legislature and domination of the government emulating what Hungary was doing except with their given ethnicity being at the top or having the Hungarian privelage.
You are definitely correct though that the Hungarians were shitty to minorities while Austria was vastly superior.
Its just not true that independence movements were popular or even existed before the war. Mostly everyone in the empire was satisfied with the AH state and their identity within it. The debate was all related to who had power within the state.
Hitlers writing is a good example of this. Even the most nationalist of them all wasn't advocating break up and union with Germany. He wanted German domination in the AH government.
Andrew Jenkins
hows that? I thought croats had quite a lot of autonomy
Colton Miller
No they were relatively autonomous under Austria but switched to Hungary at one point or another to rebalance power
Jonathan Morgan
This, Austria-Hungary was easily the best European nation to be a minority in during the 19th and early 20th century.
Sebastian Lopez
But in contrast to other minorities they definitely werent magyarized and they had their own, croatian ruling class. They surely were in a much better position than slovaks for example.
Angel Murphy
>non nation we wuzzing when all of them wanted to become hungarians for social ladder
its nice to see communist propaganda teachings from the 50s
Thomas Parker
Miserable.
Especially for those minorities who happened to fall under Hungarian administration.
Cameron Nguyen
>It wasn't a grass roots Democratic episode.
Yes it was. The Romaninas of Transylvania voted for unification with Romania on December 1st 1918.
en.wikipedia.org
To think that the Romanians did not know there was a kingdom of Romania just over the mountains and did not identify with it's ridiculous.
Romanians from Transylvania volunteered in Romania's independence war and frequently deserted the Austrian army in WW1 just so they could join the Romanian army.
Jack Bailey
Don't even try, Croats were always ungrateful shits
Christopher Jenkins
It was Miserabl-
>Common currency.
>No customs blocking trade.
>Habsburg Monarchy kept a lid on German Nationalism to not antagonize minorities.
>Monarchy insists on an Imperial Identity that was inclusive of various nations within the Empire. Didn't like to be called "Austrian" or "Austrian Empire."
>Literally the only place a Jew can't be discriminated against in Europe.
>constantly revolting.
Like?
I can only point to 1848, and that was before the Compromise.
Grayson Rogers
Österreich > Kaiserreich
Adrian Richardson
Would be curious to see if they lasted longer, ie. no WWI and increasing the status of minorities - if it would eventually become some sort of Central/Eastern European Union
Adrian Cook
>But in contrast to other minorities they definitely werent magyarized and they had their own, croatian ruling class
>who is Khuen-Hedervary
Jayden Howard
true, after hungarians and austrians, id say they had by far the most rights in terms of governmental autonomy,
and internal policy in general, maybe not perfect but still better than czechs and slovaks for example,
in fact i don't know of any settlements with other parts of monarchy, besides those with hungarians and croats,
the croats also had their own army (home guard) and whole command chain up to the marshal was croatian
but croatia(at the time dalmatia) and slavonia has always been its own deal, since they at first elected hungarian king and later once again elected Ferdinand I. for protection against turks,
both times without losing its autonomy, they have a second oldest continously working parliament in europe, i think (Congregatio Regnorum Croatie, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae)
the AH resolution actually worsened the standing of croats in the monarchy, but helped reunite the Croatia-Slavonia (in hungarian part) and Dalmatia and Istria (in austrian part of the monarchy)
the only thing that remained was to connect the two together, which has happened informally when jelacic became the governor of dalmatia, ban of croatia-slavonia and military governor of krajina,
and formaly upon the dissolution of monarchy by the edict of charles or parliament a bit later
Hunter Hernandez
This wiki article does a good job at looking at both Galicia specifically but also the rest of A-H to some extent.
Andrew Morales
If you mean by standard of living and wealth then German-speaking Austrians and Czechs were doing really good while Ukrainian peasants in Galicia were among the poorest citizens.
If you mean by political power and influence then German speakers were obviously the most influential. Hungarians had a high level of autonomy within the Empire. Hungary as a state was basically independent in internal affairs, Hungarians had their own institutions and their own passports and could even block decisions from Vienna.
Czechs in Bohemia and Poles in Galicia also gradually gained more autonomy after 1848 but didn't have the level of independence of Hungary.
Other nationalities didn't have a crown land of their own.
So the ranking would be
>hegemonic nationality
German-speakers
>special status and privileges
Hungarians
>some autonomy and influence
Poles and Czechs
>limited and symbolic
Croats
>completely dominated
Slovenes, Serbs, Slovaks, Romanians, Ukrainians
Matthew Russell
unlikely. appeasing minorities to preserve a union never works
Josiah Reed
this is my gripe with the whole United States of Greater Austria idea - by subdividing the empire along explicitly national/ethnic lines, you risk exacerbating nationalism and inter-ethnic tensions
an alternative would be to level off all that and subdivide the country (this is assuming federalization, cause obviously maintaining the A-H did not work) along strictly geographical lines, and maybe have ethnic representation within each state legislature (a bunch of European countries do this today, where parties based on minority interests get a few seats just to have a voice - Belgium is an obvious example but their system would not apply to such a large and diverse country)
Isaiah Lee
For hungarian part, read Racial Problems in Hungary by Seton-Watson.
Andrew Taylor
>Slovaks
We didn't have it that bad, the worst thing was that kids had to learn Magyar in schools.
Christian Rodriguez
a very good read related, Judsons "the habsburg empire", it goes into the social, political and economic changes of the empire from 1750-ww1
It paints a really interesting image of early nationalism(based in the landed nobility traditional autonomy), and how the empire played the serfs against this group. As one user said earlier, polish lower classes were completely loyal to the empire after they abolished some of the rights from the local nobility that had grown outrageous over the period of the polish elective monarchy and general instability.
For example, in the galacian slaughter it was only the local nobility, many of whom were agitating for a polish state, who were killed. en.wikipedia.org
the differing administrative regions of austria would later be further decentralized under the dual monarchy, leading to differing amounts of civil rights, voter eligibility, and 'cultural conversion'. slovenians under the austrian half of the monarchy had much more rights including a removal of the robot and later voting eligibility then their ruthenian brethren in the hungarian half
im not sure how related this is to the thread, but i really like talking about austrian history. if anyone has any questions that i can write essay long responses to, please ask
most plans were aiming to implement 'autonomous regions' inside these states, which would have control over some aspects of administration such as school curriculum and language policy etc. Although this was largely for the large german populace, it could work for all groups in theory.
Nevertheless, looking at the second world war and even the balkan wars 50 years later such a state would be unlikely to survive. You brought up Belgium, it is a very interesting case perhaps similar to what a modern day danubian state of nations could look like(albeit on a smaller scale). Belgium in itself is hardly stable though