Was there a sense in 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.

Sixty years after its conclusion, World War II still fills the world's memory. Massive demonstrations in China last winter recalled Japanese atrocities during the war, while just over a month ago the world marked the sixtieth anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Monuments and museums continue to be erected to commemorate the Holocaust. And films on the war, as the recent success of Downfall demonstrates, continue to attract viewers. Some of the things that happened during World War II seem to us to be unforgettable.

Five years ago, an odd discussion was underway on the HABSBURG listserv, triggered by the following question: “Was Habsburg bureaucracy sloppy?” The debate that followed was characterized by a remarkable intensity and an equally notable superficiality, leading to the conclusion that too little research on this topic has been done so far. For this reason, I am very obliged to the Austrian History Yearbook for this opportunity to clarify several important duties and functions of bureaucracy in general and the unique attributes of Habsburg bureaucracy in particular.

Professor heindl is to be thanked for providing us with an excellent overview of the history of the imperial civil service during the last century and a half of the Habsburgmonarchy. She must also be thanked for providing us with an interesting historiographyof both the Austrian and Prussian bureaucracies, although, she has to confess, at least in theAustrian case, there remains an almost endless list of unanswered questions about these people,ranging from their social and economic background, to the nature and extent of their cooperationon different levels, to their political biases and national leanings, not to mention, of course, their treatment of ordinary citizens.

It is always a risky venture to comment on an article that focuses on issues that lie outside one's own immediate research—risky because one is not familiar with most of the primary sources and with many of the controversies among the specialists in the field. On the other hand, as the gynecologist is just as much a doctor as an ophthalmologist or a surgeon, and they all aim at curing their patients of disease, historians specializing in various fields also belong to the same guild. A perspective from a certain distance can be especially useful if two historians ask closely related questions about the social, intellectual, and political history of a region they both belong to, but make attempts at the answers using differing materials from different epochs.

In october 1541, a letter left the city of Innsbruck, in which the government, or Regiment, sharply admonished the mayor and councilors of the city of Belfort in the Sundgau. With all seriousness, the government reminded them that they were obliged to submit to the Lord von Mörsperg, their God-given authority, and if they did not, they would lose their freedom and risk further punishment.1 It is easy enough to identify the petitioner and petitioned in this document: the seigniorial family of Mörsberg/Morimont on one side, and the mayor and city council of Belfort/Beffort on the other. But there was also a third, superior authority involved: the Habsburg regime in Innsbruck and its subordinate, regional representatives who administered the Vorlande from nearby Ensisheim, which had admonished the city to remain “obedient” to the Herrn von Mörsberg. This instruction was, in fact, part of a long series of disputes between mortgagee lord (Pfandherr) and city. This article examines this type of conflict in more detail to present a model for analyzing structural changes through the historical development of three cities on the western edges of the Holy Roman Empire: Belfort, Rheinfelden, and Laufenberg.

In many ways, the habsburg roma, or Gypsies, are a “people without history.”1 Given their nomadic existence, they left little or no imprint on the political, economic, and cultural institutions of the various dominions through which they passed. Even such staples of social historians as birth, death, and census records, land and tax registers, court transcripts, and popular newspapers bear little witness to their presence and impact. Not surprisingly, successive regimes in Vienna and other centers of power had little interest in a people who dwelled permanently only on the lower rungs of society. The Roma also had no corporate or national agenda. Although some did participate on the edges of various nineteenth-century national movements, they did so only marginally and often as Hungarians, Romanians, or Slovaks, rather than as representatives of the Roma community. Much of what we know comes not from the people themselves, but from the observations of non-Roma or gadžé (singular, gadžo; plural, gadžé or gadjé), whose accounts were often riddled with the kinds of cultural overlays and stereotypes that have haunted the Roma for centuries.

All historians of hungary would agree that the eighteenth century, the gateway to modern Hungary, was pivotal in Hungarian history. Yet, like some great mountain, those who climb to its peak approach from various angles, each of which affords a different vista. Historians who undertake this task also have different views and perspectives rooted in their own experience. This fact inspired the famous American historian C. Vann Woodward to speak of the “present requiring more never-completed revisions.”1 Revisions are the life-blood likely to refresh the knowledge of any period. However, revisions are not necessarily always correct, especially when an excess of enthusiasm and a dearth of perspective lead their authors to disparage or debunk, rather than to enlighten.

Linguists have long been aware that the ubiquitous distinction between “languages” and “dialects” has more to do with political and social forces, typically nationalism, than with objective linguistic distance.1 This article, an exercise in the history of (linguistic) science, examines political and social factors operating on other levels of linguistic classification than the “language-dialect” dichotomy. Nationalism and linguistic thought are mutually interactive throughout a linguistic classification system: political and social history not only affects a list of “languages,” but also a list of “dialects.”

Little is known today of the relations between the Habsburg monarchy and the United States, or even about the millions of Habsburg subjects who emigrated to America and participated in virtually every stage of its westward expansion. We are particularly ignorant of the extensive consular system that the imperial government maintained for nearly a century before the dissolution of Austria-Hungary at the end of the Great War.1 Given the largely administrative nature of consular relations, it is not surprising that scholars have not delved deeply into the archival records. Nonetheless, in addition to a substantial cache of colorful anecdotes and less riveting administrative minutiae, the records of the Habsburg consular system in the United States offer a fresh vantage point for examining the interests and concerns of the monarchy's ruling elite and the structural challenges that limited its effectiveness during the four-decade career of Austria-Hungary.

Even before the war in Europe ended formally on 8 May 1945, there could be no serious misconceptions—either among defeated and liberated peoples or among the victorious Allied powers—as to how complex the challenges of reconstructing physical infrastructure and social networks would be.1 This was particularly true in urban areas within what had been Germany's 1938 borders, where the impact of air raids had reduced many areas to rubble and had damaged the rail and road connections that supplied foodstuffs and other necessities. In Berlin and other cities, images of people clearing debris from lunar landscapes dominated the popular imagination in the late 1940s and over the following decades. Indeed, when images of immediate postwar reconstruction have been invoked, it would appear as if there existed a heroic, unbroken connection between the initiative of these largely female volunteers (Trümmerfrauen) and the economic miracle associated overwhelmingly with largely male labor in West Germany a decade later. If a remarkable preparedness to come to terms with the exigencies of the present manifested itself during the initial postwar months, historians have subsequently offered insights into how problematic a consistent and thorough confrontation with the Nazi past proved to be during the later 1940s and beyond.