Die Geschichte der Völker und Nationalitäten des Habsburgerreiches

Abstract

The appearance of national minorities as international legal issue and its further unfolding was also connected to 19th Century Eastern-Europe. While unified national states had been formed in Western-Europe by the 19th century, the Eastern-European small nationalities existed only as parts of three multi-national countries: The Tsardom of Russia, the Habsburg Monarchy, and the Ottoman Empire. The agenda of nationalities appeared several times during the 19th century in these three multinational empires. In Austria, as the result of the revolutions of spring of 1848, the first fundamental law of 25 April 1848 provided the integrity of every national "tribes" and their mother tongue. In 1867 further allowances had to be made towards nationalities. The fundamental law settled the national issue, which stated that "national tribes of the state were equal, and each tribe had infrangible right to keep and cultivate their nationality and mother tongue." Later, during the Great War, each warfaring government and the representatives of those nations, willing to create a national state, put great efforts to the national minority issues. Plans were created to solve these national-minority issues rightfully, mostly in the territory of the Habsburg Monarchy. The multi-national Habsburg Empire was stuck together not only by a dynasty, ruling over the nations and partly by the common past of hundreds of years, but the historical fact that there had never been any ethnical civil war, forced assimilation or genocide in the territory of the Monarchy. The ethnical composition of Monarchy's national families was way too complex that one would think based on the official population statistics.