The Language Question in Habsburg Army (1868-1914)

In the course of the reform of 1868/69 a system was introduced that took into account the diversity of languages within the multi-ethnic k.(u.)k. army. Thus the Austrian constitutional principle from 1867, that the linguistic diversity of the nationalities was to be considered in administrative matters, was taken account. In addition to the command and administrative language of German it was decided that if a unit or regiment had a share of ethnicity of over 20 % that this language has to be used in both training and communication. With few exceptions this system was valid until the beginning of the First World War in 1914. In 1914 one could look back on a permanent political and public debate on the question of ethnicities and languages. This project will evaluate of the extent to which the language question of the army interacted with local and national political events. The project draws on concepts, such as local incidents influenced the situation much more than parliamentary debates did. When introducing the system hopes were raised for a possible integration and increase of the "we-feeling" within the ethnic groups. Although the project draws on concepts, such as nation and language are constructs, in the army the different ethnicities had to be standardized and thus they attained, thanks to the decisions of the military elite, a social and public reality. In the end the system led to further divergence and contributed to the ongoing process of identification of the various ethnicities of the Habsburg monarchy. Expectations, debates and adaptations to the system are analyzed above all from the perspective of the military leadership, the General Staff and the Military Office of His Majesty. The attitude of the army leadership in 1914, above all its expectations concerning the reactions of individual ethnic groups, shows one of the influences of the language issue. The project aims to reconstruct of how the years of this experience contributed to the threat scenarios, the conviction that the Hungarians rejected any common ground, or the supposition that neither the South Slavs nor the Czechs were loyal? Some ethnicities by contrast, such as Muslim Bosnians and Germans, were regarded as such. Apart from the use of source materials from the Military Office of His Majesty and the General Staff the public debate will be studied with the help of influential military journals in German and Hungarian. Complementary sources, like ego-documents of leading personalities, and army regulations and their new editions, should supplement the administrative perspective. The research project is linked to the Ludwig Boltzmann-Institute for Social Science History, and will cooperate with the Historical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Centre for War Studies (Trinity College Dublin).

I investigated to what extent the goals and expectations of implementing the Habsburg army regimental language system- or taking into account the linguistic diversity of the soldiers - differed from its influence and results. A language was classified as a regimental language as soon as 20 percent of the soldiers in a regiment spoke that language. There were eleven regimental languages: Croat, Czech, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Ruthenian (Ukrainian), Slovak, Slovene and Serbian. Unofficially, Bosnian/Serbo-Croat was used, which added a twelfth language. This system meant that the soldiers were allowed to use their language when serving in the army. By taking into account the eleven languages of Habsburg nationalities, military bureaucrats between 1868 and 1914 hoped to increase the soldiers loyalty towards the army, the emperor and the state, and to train them more efficiently. The regimental languages added another facet to the so called Habsburg national and language question (Nationalitäten- und Sprachenfrage) to which it contributed regularly in media debates, and parliamentary discussion in Vienna and Budapest. Paradoxically, the system of regimental languages contributed the same way to multiethnic soldiers feelings of loyalty and gratitude to the Empire while the experience of using their native languages in the Army enhanced their sense of national identity. My project was carried out institutionally at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Social Science History (2013-2016). My cooperation with the University of Vienna/Institute for East European History, in particular Professor Philipp Ther, the War Studies Centre at the Trinity College Dublin, in particular with Professors John Horne and Alan Kramer, and the History Department at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in particular Dr. Imre Ress, helped to strengthen my arguments and to contribute to ongoing international scholarly debate. In the course of the project I (co-)organized seven academic meetings which took place in Ireland, Germany, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in Austria, as well as I presented my research at institutions such as Columbia University in New York, Cambridge and Oxford University as well as at the European University Institute in Florence. Four peer reviewed articles and book chapters are another result, and a monograph/habilitation entitled "From Language to Nation: Language Diversity and Nationalisms in the Imperial Habsburg Army, 1868-1914/8" is well under way.