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This chapter focuses on the role given to mountain areas and topography in the making of territory of modern states. It especially examines the birth and spreading of the idea that mountains could serve as natural limits to political territories, from natural philosophy and political economy of the 18^th century to the treaties of the 20^th century in Central Europe and South America. It also recalls the role of the strategic and tactical vision of mountains in modern armies. It also give room to theoreticians, such as Ratzel and Haushofer, political regimes, such as the Nazis, and ideologists of expansionism such as the one which fueled the making of the US territory in the 19^th century who criticized this policy of natural boundaries and contested the advantage of having mountains at the border of national territories. This chapter also examines the case of countries where some mountains have been thought as being a pivot of national territory and national imagination, such as in Switzerland, Korea, Slovenia.

This chapter details how the multiethnic—and consequently multilingual—nation of Manchukuo had posed a problem for Japanese authorities. For Hoshina, the multilingual situation in Manchukuo was a serious problem, which echoed the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire due to its multiplicity of ethnicities and languages. Hence, he sought in the concept of kokka-go a solution to prevent this multilingual nation from disintegrating. Hoshina identified four areas where political language problems occur: official languages, instructional language, court language, and military language. Kokka-go was a legal concept that controlled the languages of those four areas. Which language was to be allowed or forbidden in those areas could be a question of life or death for each ethnic group.

This chapter describes events and movements in Vienna from 1874 to 1907. The Vienna into which Schoenberg was born, and which so readily abused him, enclosed a society of unsettling paradoxes. Vienna was the glittering capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Yet the colorful surface often concealed disillusionment and despair, and the crosscurrents of social tension, burgeoning anti-Semitism, and political and intellectual ferment. Meanwhile, Schoenberg’s origins were comparatively humble. Genealogy cannot trace his ancestry with any precision further than his grandfather Abraham Schoenberg. At school Arnold Schoenberg was bullied for his small size and studiousness, but as always in later life when he was attacked, he fought back. Oskar Adler, one of his firm friends, was a remarkable person and his influence on Schoenberg throughout his life was profound. This chapter also describes Arnold’s marriage to Mathilde and his friendship with Zemlinksy.

This chapter discusses the force and the inner contradictions of the monolingual paradigm by taking the situation of early-twentieth-century German-language Jews, whose claims to German as their mother tongue were highly contested, as a point of departure. To this end, it analyzes nineteenth-century German discourses on Jews and language with particular attention to Richard Wagner's anti-Semitic pamphlet Judaism in Music. Drawing on the work of German scholars Stephan Braese and Andreas Gotzmann, as well as on Jacques Derrida's book Monolingualism of the Other, the chapter further distinguishes between strategies of appropriation and depropriation as divergent responses to this linguistic dispossession. From this vantage point, it approaches Franz Kafka's writings on Yiddish in his diaries, his letters, and in his 1912 “Speech on the Yiddish Language.” A section on the history of attitudes toward Yiddish in German-speaking lands, starting with Moses Mendelssohn, explains the stakes of Kafka's interest in this language. Although Kafka never considered writing in Yiddish, this chapter reveals that his writings about that language productively altered his relationship to German and allowed him to express the uncanniness of his “mother tongue.” It is also argued that French played a key mediating role in this negotiation.

This chapter assesses the Progressive synagogue in Lwów. At the time of the founding of the Progressive synagogue, Lwów had the largest Jewish population of all the cities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including Vienna. After the death of the Orthodox rabbi Jacob Ornstein, leadership of the Jewish community was taken over by Progressive Jews, primarily professionals, academics, businessmen, bankers, and industrialists. From then on, the non-Zionists and non-Orthodox held a majority in the kahal, the Jewish communal council. While they served the entire Jewish community, which included a large Orthodox and Yiddish-speaking population, many of these leaders spoke primarily Polish and German. Although culturally Jewish, they were seldom talmudic scholars or noted for their strong religious belief. The Orthodox, however, continued to be represented on the various committees.

In this brief chapter some reflections of a comparative nature between the Austrian legal order and some state systems of the German Empire are presented regarding the standards of judicial review adopted between 1890 and 1910. The comparison is based primarily on the research works of Angela Ferrari Zumbini and Lilly Weidemann, which, after a general introduction to the subject in the different legal orders, present a series of judgments issued by the administrative courts of last instance in that period. This chapter outlines the common and distinctive features of the review conducted by these courts before examining whether, and in what ways, this case law has contributed to the formation of general principles and rules of conduct for public administrations.

This chapter argues that, if France has been the home of administrative courts, Austria has greatly contributed to the development of administrative law with regard to administrative procedure. Thanks to the Austrian Administrative Court, established in 1875, administrative law has been increasingly important in the regulation of public affairs. The chapter analyses the causes, development, and effects of these features. One main theme is, of course, the scope and purpose of judicial review of administrative action. In this respect, the chapter shows the growth of litigation and the liberal approach followed by the Court. Moreover, the role of the Court as lawmaker is examined in the light of the general principles of law that it developed. . Such principles included legality and procedural fairness, with particular regard to the right to a hearing and the duty to give reasons. Considered as a whole, they required public administrations to act reasonably rather than arbitrarily. Finally, it was judge-made law that constituted the basis for the codification of 1925.

This essay examines the effectiveness of the network of relatives and friends in providing support and information to Austrian transatlantic migrants under the Habsburg Monarchy, in attempt to broaden the historical study of migrant networks. It claims that these networks determined migrant movement collectively rather than individually, and sprung up in order to minimise the risk to migrants crossing the Atlantic. It analyses passenger shipping records, particularly data relating to the ports of Bremen and Hamburg in 1910, in order to draw the conclusion that social networks of migration under the Habsburg Empire did not solely rely on family ties, but also the established conventions of the migration process and the social status of the migrants themselves. It calls for further research into the role of families in migrant networks.

In this chapter I address Ezra Pound’s Canto 35, exploring its relation to and discussion of “Mitteleuropa”. The Canto is profoundly ambivalent throughout, making it hard to discern Pound’s attitude towards this complex region. I argue that this ambivalence is a part of the poetics of this piece and reflects Pound’s conception of the region. The poet’s use of material derived from the anecdotes of his friends is also key to this poetics, and I analyse various uses of material found in this way, exploring the ramifications for the poem and Pound’s understanding of this familial method.