The job as Executive Editor of the Austrian History Yearbook is an easy one. In fact, there is only one task that you really need to do well, the selection of an editor to direct and manage the content of the AHY. On the occasion of Dan Unowsky's final edition as editor, it is clear that my invitation for him to take on this position may have been the best decision I have made during my tenure as Executive Editor and Director of the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota. Dan took the reins at a critical juncture in the Yearbook's history and has effectively led us through a challenging period. Let me highlight two aspects of Dan's leadership that have been especially important. I quickly came to appreciate and rely on his judiciousness. Ever astute, sensitive, and diplomatic, he deftly handled a number of tricky situations that inevitably arise in academic publishing. His advice has been particularly valuable as the Yearbook has responded to the new challenges and possibilities of Open Access and digital publishing. But even more significant in my mind is Dan's generosity. As editor, one often puts one's own research on hold to support and promote the scholarship of others. Dan graciously embraced this aspect of the job as he worked hard in particular to encourage the research of younger scholars. I should note as well that he complemented his work for the AHY by chairing the Department of History at the University of Memphis. In a profession that so often rewards selfishness, when academics wear blinders to focus exclusively on their own projects, Dan Unowsky reminds us that the true virtues of scholarly life should be communal.
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This volume of the Yearbook brings forth a rich collection of original research from scholars across the career spectrum. Despite the travel and research limitations posed by the pandemic over the preceding several years, we are pleased to see our field remain vibrant and productive.
In his Robert Kann Memorial Lecture, John Connelly poses a foundational question that continues to generate intense debate in the field of Austrian and Habsburg history: “Was the Habsburg Empire an Empire?” In close readings of nineteenth-century texts—voices ranging from Metternich to Czech socialists—Connelly analyzes the nuances and contradictions of the term Reich. His historiographically rich and provocative answer to the question will continue to inspire further conversation and research.
Several of the individual contributions in this volume engage with questions of the nature of Habsburg rule as it appeared in cultural representations. Anastazja Grudnicka explores the ways that Habsburg rulers identified themselves with the figure of the ancient Roman general Scipio Africanus. Scipio's malleable legacy as both man of virtue and triumphant conqueror made him a useful reference point for Habsburg rulers needing to project varying ideals of leadership over time. While Grudnicka analyzes visual sources, Larry Wolff traces the Habsburg relationship with the Italian peninsula primarily through the medium of opera. Starting with contemporary sixteenth-century Italian views of Charles V, the article offers a dazzling study of the Habsburg ruler as he appeared in works of the Risorgimento, with special focus on Verdi's operas.
The nineteenth century gets further attention in three articles that span the histories of policing, education, and the environment. Pavel Himl takes up policing during the period 1790–1830. Moving beyond questions of political policing in an era of revolution and restoration, he probes the extent to which police work increasingly focused on morality and sexual norms. Close reading of records from the 1820s offers valuable insights into the policing of sexuality and everyday life. Ágoston Berecz gives a richly textured picture of the complexity of Habsburg educational opportunities by examining the experiences of Romanian-speaking boys who attended Hungarian-language high schools. The article probes decisions made by students and their parents, and corresponding attitudes and adjustments from school administrators and teachers. Berecz argues that acquiring Hungarian-language skills played a role in the social reproduction of a Romanian national elite in late nineteenth-century Hungary. Corentin Gruffat's study of the 1869 Austrian Reichswassergesetz (Imperial Water Act) offers an original, innovative way to conceptualize Habsburg rule—in this case, over the waters that flowed in its territories. Part legal history, part environmental history, part economic history, the article explores the debates that ensued when rivers were declared a “public good.”
Water is similarly the focus of a forum on Adriatic tourism comprised of three articles and an insightful comment by Pamela Ballinger. Felix Jeschke studies patterns of Czech tourism at resorts along the eastern Adriatic in the early twentieth century, charting both a special relationship Czechs claimed with fellow Slavs, and a paternalism they exhibited toward local Croatians. Igor Tchoukarine's article on the Czech-Yugoslav tourist connection in the interwar period casts light on the medical discourses of this type of travel, as doctors promoted the health benefits of sojourns to the Adriatic. Balneologists conceived of the Yugoslav coast as a prime site for therapeutic bathing. Fast forwarding more than half a century, Josef Djordjevski examines mass tourism in late socialist Yugoslavia. An influx of foreign tourism—permitted by a state in economic crisis—raised concerns that the very pristine nature on offer was being spoiled by overdevelopment and environmental damage.
Finally, Britta McEwen expands upon our understanding of the welfare system in interwar Red Vienna with a focus on the body. The bodies of single mothers and children were surveilled and monitored, subjects and objects of concern for a city government deeply invested in rebuilding the “social body,” a collection of neue Menschen for the new era. McEwen explores the far less understood bodily experiences of these women and children themselves.
As highly valued assistant editors, Timothy McDonald and James Gresock have polished this volume from beginning to end. The names that don't appear here in print, but who make the presentation of scholarship possible, are those of the anonymous external readers who reviewed the articles. We thank them for doing this unsung but absolutely vital work. The wide range of topics and questions explored by the authors in this volume expands even further in the fifty-six books under review in the Book Review section, edited by Donald Wallace and Bryan Kozik. The AHY remains committed to serving as a hub for English-language reviews of books covering our wide chronological and geographic field of study, which includes the territories in Central Europe that were formerly under Habsburg rule and now comprise the modern states of Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and parts of Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, and Serbia.
In closing, Volume 54 of the Austrian History Yearbook includes a heartfelt remembrance of a luminary of our field, Professor István Deák. Pieter Judson and Marsha Rozenblit, two of his former students and later friends and colleagues, reflect on Deák's family history in Hungary, his career as a preeminent historian of East Central Europe, and his generous, humane mentoring of so many of the field's leading scholars trained at Columbia University. Judson and Rozenblit recall Deák's early statements on nationalities in the Habsburg monarchy that appeared in this very journal. For those who love to trace footnotes—and what historian doesn't?— a search back to the Austrian History Yearbook, Volume 3, Issue 1 (January 1967) yields a treat. There one can find record of a remarkable gathering, referred to simply as “The Conference,” where Deák and his peers essentially sketched the contours of the field as it would unfold over the next half century. It has been an immense pleasure for me to work with Dan Unowsky as co-editor; his generosity, humor, and good judgment are the stuff of legend. Among his many credentials he also bears the imprimatur so highly trusted in this profession: “Deák student.”
