Austria-Hungary: Violence and the Liberal Empire

Lecture Series Empire and Violence


Austria-Hungary: Violence and the Liberal Empire

At the beginning of the 20^th century, Austria-Hungary was a “liberalizing empire.” This was especially—but not only—the case for the Austrian half of the empire in its social and political legislation, and in its administrative and judicial treatment of the famous “nationality conflict.” Austria-Hungary was also not directly involved in the extra-European colonial conquest in which other, allegedly “liberal” European powers engaged, and which produced violent, racially motivated regimes of rule. Nevertheless, from the outbreak of the First World War, Austria-Hungary engaged in a comparatively high degree of violence—both discursively and physically—not only toward the enemy, but also toward large parts of its own population. The lecture explores the foundations of this violence and considers how we measure less visible forms of violence in the daily life of liberal European societies of the belle époque. Should discourses and practices of mass violence seem any more exceptional when we encounter them today?

Moderation
Dominik Markl (Department of Biblical Studies and Historical Theology)

Response
Tamara Scheer (University of Vienna, Department of East European History)

Organization
Dominik Markl (Department of Biblical Studies and Historical Theology) and Juliane Prade-Weiss (LMU Munich, Department of Comparative Literature) on behalf of “Discourses of Mass Violence in Comparative Perspective”