Chapters

Even after the expulsion of the Habsburgs from northern Italy had greatly reduced the proportion of Italians in the overall population of the Monarchy, they still enjoyed a privileged position as compared with most of the other nationalities under Habsburg rule.

The Habsburg presence in northern Italy was an important factor in the dynasty’s image as a ‘big player’ amongst the great European powers. However, the dynasty was dealt a number of bitter blows by the Risorgimento, the movement that finally brought about the forging of a unified Italian nation-state. 

The Italians in the Litoral (German: ‘Küstenland’, made up of the county of Görz, Trieste and Istria) were likewise torn between their traditional loyalty to the Habsburg Monarchy and the appeal of Italian irredentism. In view of the growth of the southern Slav nationalist movements in the eastern Adriatic region, they also feared for their privileged position as the dominant ethnic group. Trieste in particular was the scene of severe ethnic conflict.

New sources of energy and power-driven machinery changed industrial production and work. The industrial promotion film soon developed as a genre, drawing attention to technical progress in general and in detail. Many films were made during the war showing the efficiency of the industrial war effort in Austria-Hungary.

Railways and steamships offered people greater mobility in the nineteenth century, boosted around 1900 by bicycles, automobiles and aeroplanes and also shown in films. Mobility became a visual experience.

Poles and Ruthenians dominated the northeastern region of the Habsburg Monarchy. Numerically, the two nationalities belonged to the larger linguistic groups in Austria-Hungary.

Galicia and Bukovina are territories we might seek in vain on the map today. Seen from the coeval perspective of the Viennese central authority, these countries were deemed to be obscure marginal regions: as “Semi-Asia” or “Wild East”, they were regarded as the “poorhouse” of the Monarchy.

The first words of the Polish national anthem call out the hopes of the Poles to regain their freedom. Poland foundered as a nation because of the Polish Partitions in the late eighteenth century, when the neighbouring Great Powers of Prussia, Russia and Austria partitioned the territory of the Polish aristocratic republic between them.

Since a re-establishment of the Polish state was politically improbable in the foreseeable future, the Galician-Polish élite considered that co-existence within the Habsburg Monarchy was a fact that ought to be exploited as much as possible – until the time was ripe to regain its own state.

Automobile drivers, members of the wealthy upper classes, were seen increasingly on the roads. While they drew admiration, the conquerors of the air were celebrated as true heroes. Film-makers were quickly on the scene to give the film-going public a taste of this new luxury mobile leisure.

The Poles were directly affected by the events of the war; the Polish territories both inside the Habsburg Monarchy and those under German and Russian rule became theatres of war for many years. From the Polish perspective, the First World War was a conflict between the three Partition powers, which now started to negotiate offers for Poland’s future status.

The Ruthenians, as the West Ukrainians were called in Habsburg Austria, stepped into the epoch of nationalism with the worst possible cards in their hand. As “faceless people” they had no more than a very weak awareness of their own national autonomy. The status of knowledge about their ethnicity was minimal, also in the corridors of power in Vienna.

The Austrian Ruthenians played a certain ground-breaking role in the formation of a Ukrainian national consciousness, because under the rule of the Tsars the existence of an autonomous Ukrainian nation was discussed, if at all, only by their co-nationals.

In the nineteenth century people’s experience of the world had expanded, and the world itself was larger and also more accessible, thanks not only to the faster means of transport but also to the cinema.

The Slovaks comprised one of the smaller nationalities in the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire. In 1910 around 2.1 million people professed their adherence to the Slovakian linguistic group, 3.8 % of the population of the total Monarchy.

For the Slovaks the evolutionary process in becoming a nation was shaped by the many difficulties facing this small ethnic group to assert themselves as “newcomers” among the nationalities of Central Europe.

This quotes the militant first words of the Slovakian national anthem, expression of the Slovaks’ endeavours to attain emancipation from the oppressive Hungarian-Magyar dominance in cultural and political affairs.

Old photographs and early film recordings show that photographers and film-makers – whether professional or amateur – liked to record unusual events, such as a visit to the Prater, as a means of preserving the special and memorable moments, a day of carefree happiness that can be relived for an instant.

During the nineteenth century sport developed into an increasingly popular pastime, and sports became more professional at the same time. People invested increasingly in sports equipment. Whether as a leisure activity by the wealthy upper classes or a mass pursuit, the cinema captured all these sporting developments on camera.

The Czechs were numerically the third strongest ethnic group in the Habsburg Monarchy. The Bohemian lands – Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia – were their main historical settlement areas. In many spheres they were caught up in bitter rivalry with their German-speaking compatriots.

The course of their evolution into the Czech nation can be seen as absolutely  prototypical for the development of modern national awareness among the smaller ethnic groups in Central Europe. Here, the Czechs were pioneers in many ways.

The Czech national evolution was shaped by the cultural pioneer achievements of the so-called “arousers” (Czech: buditelé). In the early nineteenth century a number of academics and scholars prepared the foundations of the modern Czech national consciousness from which the “rebirth” (národní obrození) of the Czech linguistic nation sprang.

The 1848 Revolution gripped the whole of Central Europe. The events of that time signified a change of course not only in German national awareness, but 1848 was also a historic milestone for the young Czech national movement in articulating national demands.

The Czech people’s national interpretation of history always accentuated the democratic element. The evolution of the nation was seen here as the endeavour to emancipate the broader mass of the people from feudal or national oppression. The opponents from the camp of those defending German hegemony in Bohemia designated the Czechs demeaningly as “a nation of plebeian lackeys”.