The destruction of the Habsburg monarchy forced the Austrian Germans to make a wholly unforeseen and, with few exceptions, a heretofore unthinkable decision about their destiny. The rump Austria of 1919 was too weak to command the allegiance of all its citizens. Many Austrians, despairing of mastering the economic and political problems in Vienna, searched for an easier solution: the realization of the forbidden but still anticipated unification with their conationals in the German Republic. For it seemed in retrospect that only their Habsburg loyalties had separated them from the main channel of the Germanic stream. Often Austrian civic virtues seemed to them to have been bought at some rummage sale of political ideas—the symbols of imperial order, the loyalties of political Catholicism, a collection of Francis Joseph's virtues—hardly the raw material from which to build patriotism in postwar Austria.

Rabinbach has made a valuable contribution to the study of the Jewish migration within the Habsburg monarchy, the most noteworthy phenomenon of which was the wholesale mass movement of Galician Jews to Vienna during the second half of the nineteenth century. The author, relying mainly on contemporary statistical records for source material, ably documents the increase in Jewish inhabitants in Vienna from one to ten percent of the total population during this period.

An Enthusiastic Group of Romanians gathered in Sibiu at the 1905 annualassembly of Astra, the largest Romanian cultural association in Transylvania, to celebrate their nation and their future. Moved by the gathering and the festivities, the editor of the association's paper, Transilvania, expressed a hope he and thousands of his compatriots shared: “Never before has this people been in a more favorable position as a superiorethnic element, as an important factor of civilization, and as a gifted nation with vitality, character, and great talents that guarantee it a bright future and a distinguished place among the peoples of eastern Europe.”1 Like many prominent Romanians of his time, the editor firmlybelieved that his nation would enjoy equal status with other European national groups in the near future. Equal standing had been a central goal of theRomanian intellectuals and clergy who founded the Transylvanian Associationfor Romanian Literature and the Culture of the Romanian People, or Astra, in 1861. Since the eighteenth century, Romanian elites in Transylvania had worked to obtain recognition for their national community so that they couldparticipate fully in the political life of the region. Two centuries later Astra members still hoped they were on the verge of forming a Romanian nation that could achieve the right to control its own destiny.

Not many works have been published during the past decade that deal with Austrian history or with that of the states which once formed an integral part of the Habsburg empire.

The many friends, colleagues, and students of Prof. May were genuinely shocked when they learned of his untimely death on June 17, 1968. Certainly nobody who saw the commanding figure of this man preside with customary charm, wit, and vigor over a panel on Austrian history at the American Historical Association convention in Toronto in December, 1967, would have expected this tragic news.

The example of the Slovaks, next to the Ruthenians the weakest and least privileged people of the Danubian monarchy, is eminently fitted to the examination of Austria's ability to deal with the main problem of its modern political life, namely, that of the coexistence and possible reconciliation of its nationalities. One of the first to point out this fundamental issue for the continued existence of Austria with unusual clarity was František Palacký in his 1848 letter to the Vorparlament of the Frankfurt National Assembly. Far from being an expression of unreserved faith in the future of the monarchy, his memorable words on the necessity of the Habsburg state1 were dictated by political realism and foresight. Emphasizing the dangers of German nationalism and Russian imperialism, which he perhaps intentionally exaggerated,2 the Czech leader was fully aware of the political weakness of the small Slav nations who were only gradually establishing their national identity. It was for their sake that he gave a final expression to the policy of Austro-Slavism, seeking the salvation of the Austrian Slavs in the preservation of the monarchy. He endeavored, however, to give it a new raison d'être based on the creation of a common defensive system for its individual nationalities in which all were to be given “complete equality of rights and respect.” While sincere, Palacký's support of Austria was neither unconditional nor devoid of a strong element of doubt. The nationalist policies of the Austrian Germans and the rebellious Magyars, whose chauvinism was only thinly covered by a veneer of liberalism, caused him to moderate his opinion in regard to the ability of the Austrian rulers to change the empire into a federal and democratic state. Thus, at the end of his Frankfurt message Palacký expressed only the hope that the Habsburg monarchy would not miss the opportunity to change into a state based on principles of justice, which alone could save it from disintegration.

The typical dictator of the interwar period was, like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, already a convinced fascist or authoritarian when he first came to power. This was not the case in Austria, where Engelbert Dollfuß, the semifascist dictator of 1934, was seemingly a genuine democrat when he was appointed chancellor in May 1932. Even his appointment was accidental. Had the Social Democrats accepted Ignaz Seipel's and Karl Buresch's overtures in 1931 to join the Christian Socials in a coalition government, Dollfuß might never have become chancellor. And had they not rejected a second effort by Buresch in April 1932 and demanded new elections, democratic government in Austria would have been strengthened rather than weakened.

Because of the various factors in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy which retarded the development of Slovak culture and science, Slovak historians have, on the whole, only during the past few decades begun to examine historical problems from a broad perspective. Consequently, it is by no mere accident that the problem to which part of the attention of this conference is being devoted—the Slovak political movement as a disintegrating force in the Habsburg monarchy—is relatively new to Slovak historiography. Until now it has not been examined from a broad perspective, if only because of the many different historical, political, social, and economic ingredients which were involved in turning nationalism into a significant disintegrating force. Slovak writers have, however, made various studies of the nationality problem—a problem which has ever since the eighteenth century been the most sensitive issue in Slovak history. Certain of these studies have thrown light on both the integrating and disintegrating: forces of the monarchy—two forces which are realy interdependent.

The Ottoman conquest of Szigetvar and Gyula (1566) exposed the weakness of the Habsburg monarchy. Unable to mount a military response, Maximilian II depended on his diplomats to ward off the imposition of a conqueror's peace along the Hungarian border. But an official register, the Book of Halil Beg, put forward the sultan's claims to a wide swath of towns and villages, including many still held by Habsburg loyalists. Moreover, the Ottomans said, His Majesty had best accept a settlement on these terms; victorious Turkish captains wanted more and were restrained only by Selim II's orders. This essay describes the efforts of Maximilian's ambassadors to forestall additional losses in peacetime. After years of tough negotiation, they managed to obtain minor revision of the relevant treaty text. Although the Book of Halil Beg would indeed be the basis for any border settlement, as the Porte insisted, the Ottomans acknowledged that Vienna disputed certain of its provisions. This mere protest may have been enough to assure loyalist magnates in Hungary that the dynasty had not abandoned them, or their hereditary lands. Hence the paradox of Habsburg-Ottoman diplomacy. The 1576 treaty of peace, formally ending hostilities, was at the same time a charter for Kleinkrieg.

In February 1919, Theresia Prokop submitted an application for German citizenship to the Bautzen administrative district in Saxony. The application showed that Prokop was originally from northern Bohemia, had lived in Saxony since 1901, and was a “Bohemian” citizen of “German-Austrian” nationality. Further, it noted: “It is her dearest wish to become German.”

On the surface, there would appear to be little cause to explore the connections between Jews and the bureaucracy of the Austro-Hungarian foreign office in the last decade before the outbreak of World War I. During the tenures of foreign ministers Count Alois Aehrenthal (1906–12) and Count Leopold Berchtold (1912–15), no Jew belonged to the diplomatic corps, and only one functionary from the central office in Vienna is known to have entered the service professing Judaism. The situation within the Ballhausplatz certainly did not reflect that found in the other mainstay of the unified Dual Monarchy, the Habsburg armed forces, which contained an extraordinarily high percentage of Jewish officers, particularly in the reserves. Our knowledge of the experience of Jews in Central Europe's other major foreign office, the Wilhelmstraβe in Berlin, merely reinforces the view that few formal ties existed between Jews and diplomacy.