Christian Promitzer Austria and the Balkans

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Austria and the Balkans: Exploring the role of travelogues in the construction of an area

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CHRISTIAN PROMITZER

AUSTRIA AND THE BALKANS: EXPLORING THE ROLE OF TRAVELOGUES IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN AREA

INTRODUCTION

One of the main purposes of area studies is the virtual construction of those very spaces that form the basis of their existence. This statement does not in- tend to postulate that the determination of global areas is totally arbitrary (the definition of certain spaces as “historical regions” is also a matter of plausibility), but it wants to bring to the foreground the intellectual energy that has to be invested, before a “historical” area can come into being. This is especially the case with the volatile region that depending on the respective viewpoint of an author may be called “Southeastern Europe,” “South-East Europe,” or the “Balkans”. In the last two decades Karl Kaser, Maria Todorova, Holm Sundhaussen, Alexis Drace Francis, Dietmar Müller and many others have tried to either deconstruct or reify these areal concepts within their given historical foci of interest. Both Todorova’s suggestion that a region should be under- stood on the basis of its common historical legacy and Kaser’s simple, but not simplistic, relativization that the respective boundaries of “Southeastern Eu- rope” depend on the leading questions a scholar asks are most convincing.1

1 See Karl Kaser, Südosteuropäische Geschichte und Geschichtswissenschaft, UTB 8224 (Vi- enna – Cologne – Weimar: Böhlau, 2nd revised edition), 23; Maria Todorova, “Der Balkan als Analysekategorie:Grenzen, Raum, Zeit,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft: Zeitschrift für historische Sozialwissenschaft 28 (2002): 470-492; Zeitschrift für historische Sozialwissenschaft, 28 (2002), p. 470-492.Maria Todorova, “Historische Vermächtnisse als Analysekategorie. Der Fall Südosteuropa,” in Europa und die Grenzen im Kopf, ed. Karl Kaser, Dagmar Grams- hammer-Hohl, Robert Pichler, Wieser-Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens 11 (Klagenfurt – Vienna: Wieser, 2003), 227-252, also online, accessed December 31, 2011, http://wwwg.uni-klu.ac.at/eeo/Todorova_Vermaechtnisse; Todorova, “Spacing Europe: What is a Historical Region?” East Central Europe 32 (1-2) (2005): 59-78; Holm Sundhaussen, “Europa balcanica: Der Balkan als historischer Raum Europas,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft:

190 CHRISTIAN PROMITZER

I would add that the historical plausibility of a region might be better under- stood, if we also include all the material interests that are imputed to it. Not to do so would risk that the postmodernist renunciation of primordialism forgets the material base of modern capitalism and how material and in particular economic interests themselves influenced the construction of historical regions outside capitalist centers of the European continent as regions for possible economic exploitation.2 To take such a perspective does not imply the desire to reinstate a wholesale, i.e. primordialist, variant of Marxism – and much less Marxism-Leninism – as an integrative worldview, variants of which were for forty years official doctrine in the “socialist” Balkans. The latter have well enough documented that they may serve as examples for a dogmatic philoso- phy and an integrated worldview untainted by the lessons of constructivist epis- temology. My point is that something essential is going to be missed, when the Marxist insistence on material interests for explaining the world is ignored. In doing so, purportedly constructivist approaches risk making themselves the plaything of external interests when they try to formulate new strategies in order to overcome the ascertained general crisis of area studies: The latter (if we leave aside their pendants in the former “socialist” states – as is the case with “Balkan studies” for example in Bulgaria and Serbia) can be considered as conforming to transdisciplinary Western approaches that, due to changing external material interests since the end of the Cold War, have lost their raison d'être, and are now trying to find new sources of legitimacy vis-à-vis their financing and patronizing institutions. As opposed to such a prospective muddling through a general “crisis”, I would, rather, suggest a retrospective approach and examine the underlying ideological foundations and origins of area studies, since these may in part still be the disguised guiding principles of academic research. This, exactly, can be done with respect to various German travelogues from Austrian resp. Austro- Hungarian authors on the Balkans from the 1830 up to 1912 in order to assess the role of the Dual Monarchy in the Western process of “Imagining the Bal- kans.”3 In tracing this phenomenon I will, first, illuminate some aspects of the

Zeitschrift für historische Sozialwissenschaft 25 (1999): 626-653; Sundhaussen, “Der Balkan: ein Plädoyer für Differenz,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft: Zeitschrift für historische Sozial- wissenschaft 29 (2003): 642-658; Alex Drace-Francis, “Zur Geschichte des Südosteuropakon- zepts bis 1914,” in Europa und die Grenzen im Kopf, 275-286, also online, accessed Decem- ber 31, 2011, http://wwwg.uni-klu.ac.at/eeo/Drace_Suedosteuropakonzept.pdf; Dietmar Mül- ler, “Southeastern Europe as a historical Meso-region: Constructing Space in Twentieth Century German Historiography,” European Review of History 10 (2) (2003): 393-408. 2 These thoughts are based on a historical model of a Braudelian and/or Wallersteinian development of modern capitalism that necessarily includes the establishment of “core” and “peripheral” regions. On the Balkans as a “peripheral” region in this sense see Karl Kaser, “Das Abdriften Südosteuropas vom dominierenden europäischen Entwicklungsweg seit dem 11. Jahrhundert,” Balkan Studies 29 (2) (1988): 239-264; Kaser, “Im Schatten der europäischen Weltwirtschaft. Die Verfestigung der Agrarstrukturen und die Peripherisierung Südosteuro- pas,“ in Südosteuropa-Fallstudien: 20 Jahre “Südosteuropäische Geschichte” in Graz, ed. Horst Haselsteiner (Graz: Abteilung für Südosteuropäische Geschichte) 49-81, Kaser, Südost- europäische Geschichte, 98-106.. 3 Maria N. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009/2nd

AUSTRIA AND THE BALKANS 191 representation of the Balkans among Austrian elites, and, second, consider Austrian travelogues as a possible source for a wholesale representation of a region.

THE BALKANS IN THE MINDS OF AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN AND MODERN AUSTRIAN ELITES

With respect to studies of Southeastern Europe in Germany, some preliminary work has been done with respect to their form during National Socialism.4 But for little Austria – and above its mighty imperial predecessor – the respective study of the form that it’s interests in the Balkans took is still ahead of us. In Austria itself, analogies between current and past interests in the region on its southern border are a recurrent phenomenon, especially since the end of the communist regimes in Eastern Central and Southeastern Europe. In the mid- 1980s the Austrian politician Erhard Busek, together with the historian and diplomat Emil Brix, addressed the historical connections between Vienna and the Balkans, specifically links to Serbia and Montenegro. This took place in a general, liberal-conservative discourse on Central Europe (“Mitteleuropa”) and how best to support various local dissidents and dissident groups in their endeavor to fight and topple their respective communist regimes, which for various reasons found themselves at that time on the defensive. Such endeavors were supposed to secure Austria, as the core of the former Habsburg Empire, a convenient position as intermediary in the political rollback in East Central Europe.5 A decade later, in 1999, NATO was at war with Serbia and the Euro- pean Union and other Western states launched the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe. In this year, Busek published his book “Austria and the Bal- kans.” There the subsequent Special Coordinator of the Stability Pact com- plained that “the average Austrian only has scanty knowledge of Southeastern Europe.” He called for refreshing old links, arguing that: “Around 1900 the city of Vienna was a kind of world capital for a few seconds of global history. It would have never existed without this intellectual background [i.e. of South- eastern Europe – C.P.]. Even today, cultural life in Austria is determined ex- ceedingly by people from Southeastern Europe, as is documented, for example,

edition [1997]). 4 Michael Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft im Dienst der nationalsozialistischen Politik? Die “Volks- deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaften” von 1931-1945 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999); Hel- mut Schaller, Der Nationalsozialismus und die slawische Welt (Regensburg: Pustet, 2002); Mathias Beer, ed., Südostforschung im Schatten des Dritten Reiches: Institutionen, Inhalte, Personen, Südosteuropäische Arbeiten 119 (München: Oldenbourg, 2004); Christian Promit- zer, “The South Slavs in the Austrian Mind: Serbs and Slovenes in the Changing View from German Nationalism to National Socialism,” in Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict & Natio- nalism in Habsburg Central Europe, ed. Nancy M. Wingfield (New York – Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003), 183-215. 5 Erhard Busek and Emil Brix, Projekt Mitteleuropa (Vienna: Ueberreuter, 1986), 102-103. 192 CHRISTIAN PROMITZER by the cast lists of operas and orchestras. The same can be said for the academic sphere, which has been able to profit even more from this part of Europe and the intellectual acumen of its neighbors.”6 In the last two decades, members of the Austrian political and economic elites have supported various international political, economic and ultimately military interventions in the Balkans in an endeavor to introduce the Western values of democracy and the market economy to this part of the European continent. When doing so they invoke the diverse cultural attractions of a seeming- ly forgotten region that now, after end of communism and of the ensuing Yu- goslav Wars, has ridden itself of various ideological obscurations. Such a discourse invariably reiterates the “exotic” charm the region's various “un- European” elements, but at the same time does not forget do define the region as a target area of specific Austrian economic and financial interests. Those among the interpreters of Austrian interests in the Balkans who tend to reflect such a state of affairs on an intellectual level cannot avoid addressing the clearly one-sided subject-object relationship that has developed in the now twenty year old attempt of Austrian capital to penetrate the Balkans economically. Erhard Busek, for example, considers economic inequalities between the Bal- kan countries and the wealthy core states of the European Union as a problem that nevertheless will be resolved in the long term. He declares his hope that such differences will melt away in the course of the European integration of the individual Balkan states.7 Austrian relations with the Balkans are and have always been multilayered, from diverse cultural ties that have richened Austria's high culture institutions on the one hand, to the economic development aid that Austrian firms have brought to the region on the other. Such diversity is conveyed paradigmatically by two of the leading Austrian institutions financing academic projects that draw in scholarly potential from the individual Balkan countries, namely, the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe (IDM), of which Erhard Busek is director, and the Erste Foundation. The latter has its origin in an Aus- trian banking institution that has been intensively engaged in the Balkans for some time and – possibly due to its character as former cooperative bank and thus a civil society initiative – has to be treated differently from the activities of similar Austrian enterprises in the region. The Erste Bank and its foundation try to combine economic interests with the honest will to fund qualitatively high- standard research on the respective target societies. It cannot be denied that both the IDM and the Erste Foundation together with their financiers are able to create significant incentives in different research fields. But this should not overshadow the fact that the economic interests of Austrian capital in the Bal- kans are part of a process that is only possible at the cost of appropriated assets and the working population in these countries. Austrian capital – to strain further a designation of a certain epistemological and terminological haziness but

6 Erhard Busek, Österreich und der Balkan. Vom Umgang mit dem Pulverfass Europas (Vien- na: Molden, 1999), 97. 7 Ibid., chapters 7 through 11. AUSTRIA AND THE BALKANS 193 seems quite appropriate in the concrete case – is only one of many players in the field of course, and it is not even the biggest. What is important here is the fact that in the Austrian case such activities are propagated, legitimized and embedded within the framework of a common history – the underscoring of the links between the Habsburg Empire and the Balkans before the First World War. Many aspects of contemporary Austrian relations to the Balkans are reminiscent of the cross border and transnational connections of the Habsburg Monar- chy to the new Balkan nation-states in the decades before 1914, as they developed from the early days of industrialization in the Dual Monarchy, to the establishment of modern trade routes in the Balkans and, ultimately, to the Aus- tro-Russian convention of 1873, which led to a delimitation of respective zones of influence for the two empires in the region. To be clear, at issue here are not the internal relations of the Empire‘s core to its „peripheries,” relations that have been defined elsewhere as a special brand of “postcolonialism.”8 I rather want to address the diplomatic, political, and economical endeavors of the Dual Monarchy vis-à-vis the Balkans. These endeavors became a matter of concrete power politics in the course of the slow decline of the Ottoman Empire and the failure on the part of the Habsburg Monarchy to secure its own colonies over- seas. In the Balkans the Dual Monarchy had to compete with the Russian Em- pire and was likewise under the keen surveillance of the Concert of Europe. At the Congress of Berlin of 1878, Austria-Hungary insisted on its prerogatives in the western Balkans. Serbia found itself until their early years of the twentieth century under the protection of the Dual Monarchy, which saved it from defeat in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885/86. The Habsburg Monarchy further played an important role as protector of the Catholic peoples in the Ottoman Empire and in the “contentment” of Macedonia in the early twentieth century.9

8 See Johannes Feichtinger, Ursula Prutsch and Moritz Csáky, eds., Habsburg postcolonial: Machtstrukturen und kollektives Gedächtnis, Gedächtnis – Erinnerung – Identität 2 (Inns- bruck et al.: Studien-Verlag, 2003); Wladimir Fischer and Waltraud Heindl., eds., Räume und Grenzen in Österreich-Ungarn 1867-1918. Kulturwissenschaftliche Annäherungen, Kultur – Herrschaft – Differenz 11 (Tübingen – Basel: Francke, 2010); Andrew Neil Hammond, “The debated lands: British travel writing and the construction of the Balkans” (PhD diss, Universi- ty of Warwick; 2002), 1-33, also online, accessed December 31, 2011, http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1284/; Endre Hárs et al., Zentren, Peripherien und kollektive Iden- titäten in Österreich-Ungarn, Kultur – Herrschaft – Differenz 9 (Tübingen – Basel: Francke, 2006); Rainer Georg Grübel, Gun-Britt Kohler and Hans-Henning Hahn, eds., Habsburg und die Slavia, Mitteleuropa – Osteuropa 10 (Frankfurt et al.: Lang, 2008); Wolfgang Müller- Funk, Peter Plener and Clemens Ruthner, eds., Kakanien revisited. Das Eigene und das Fremde (in) der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie, Kultur – Herrschaft – Differenz 1 (Tübingen – Basel: Francke, 2002); Christian Voß, ed., Ottoman and Habsburg legacies in the Balkans. Language and Religion to the North and to the South of the Danube River, Stud- ies on Language and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe 8 (Munich et al.: Sagner, 2010). 9 See, in general, Walter Markov, Grundzüge der Balkandiplomatie. Ein Beitrag zur Geschich- te der Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 1999): 49-88; Peter Bachmaier, “Der österreichische kulturelle Einfluss in Bulgarien von der Zeit der nationalen Wiedergeburt bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Österreich und Bulgarien 1878-2008: Geschich- te und Gegenwart, ed. Bachmaier, Andreas Schwarcz and Antoaneta Tcholakova, Miscellanea Bulgarica 19 (Vienna: Verein “Freunde des Hauses Wittgenstein,” 2008), 139-150.; Daniel

194 CHRISTIAN PROMITZER

Special attention has to be given to the former Ottoman province of Bosnia- Herzegovina, which Austria-Hungary occupied in the wake of the Congress of Berlin and annexed in 1908 as a corpus separatum ouside of the formal dual structures of the Monarchy. Bosnia had become a kind of “surrogate colony.” With respect to the notion of “colonialism” contemporary scholars continue to discuss the specific role of Bosnia, whose population found its place in “ethnographic expositions” in a way similar to how other colonial powers organized Völkerschauen of nationalities from their own colonies. The discussion of “Habsburg colonialism” does not end in Bosnia but continues to include farther reaching claims in the directions of Montenegro, northern Albania, Serbia and Kosovo.10 Austro-Hungarian capital participated in the development of com-

Bertsch, Anton Prokesch von Osten (1795-1876): ein Diplomat Österreichs in Athen und an der Hohen Pforte. Beiträge zur Wahrnehmung des Orients im Europa des 19. Jahrhunderts, Südosteuropäische Arbeiten 123 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2005), 361-436; Francis Roy Bridge, “Österreich (-Ungarn) unter den Großmächten,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie im System der internationalen Beziehungen, 1. Teilband, ed. Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch, Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918 VI/1 (Vienna: Verlag d. Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1989), 196-373, here 247-257, 268-276, 293-296, 300-309, 314-323; Engel- bert Deusch, Das k. (u.) k. Kultusprotektorat im albanischen Siedlungsgebiet in seinem kultu- rellen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Umfeld, Zur Kunde Südosteuropas II/38 (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar: Böhlau, 2009); Virginia Paskaleva, “Bulgarien und die Habsburgermo- narchie,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie im System der internationalen Beziehungen, 2. Teil- band, ed. Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch, Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918 VI/2 (Vienna: Verlag d. Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1993), 387-435; Günther Ramhardter, “Propaganda und Außenpolitik,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie im Sys- tem der internationalen Beziehungen, 1. Teilband, 496-536, here 520-528; Hanns D. Schan- derl, Die Albanienpolitik Österreich-Ungarns und Italiens 1877-1908, Albanische Forschun- gen 9 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971); Antoaneta Tcholakova, “Der lange Weg zum Ver- bündeten. Österreichisch-bulgarische Beziehungen 1878-1918,” in Der unbekannte Verbünde- te – Bulgarien im Ersten Weltkrieg. Begleitband zur Sonderausstellung des Heeresgeschicht- lichen Museums, 24. Juni 2009-21. Februar 2010, ed. Claudia Reichl-Ham (Vienna: Heeres- geschichtliches Museum, 2009), 26-41.; Karl Vocelka, “Das Osmanische Reich und die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918, ” in Die Habsburgermonarchie im System der internationalen Beziehungen, 2. Teilband, 247-278; Branislav Vranešević, “Die außenpolitischen Be- ziehungen zwischen Serbien und der Habsburgermonarchie,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie im System der internationalen Beziehungen, 2. Teilband, 319-375; Vranešević, “Außenpoliti- sche Beziehungen zwischen Montenegro und der Habsburgermonarchie von 1848 bis 1918,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie im System der internationalen Beziehungen, 2. Teilband, 376- 386. 10 Bojan Aleksov, “Habsburg’s ‘Colonial Experiment’ in Bosnia and Hercegovina revisited,” in Schnittstellen: Gesellschaft‚ Nation, Konflikt und Erinnerung in Südosteuropa. Festschrift für Holm Sundhaussen zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Ulf Brunnbauer, Andreas Helmedach and Stefan Troebst, Südosteuropäische Arbeiten 133 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007), 201-216, here 201- 205; Bojan Baskar, “‘The first Slovenian Poet in a Mosque’: Orientalism in the Travel Writ- ing of a Poet from the Imperial Periphery,” in Imagining ‘the Turk,’ ed. Božidar Jezernik (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), 97-110, here 104; Raymond Detrez, “Co- lonialism in the Balkans. Historic realities and contemporary perceptions,” May 15, 2002, accessed December 31, 2011, http://www.kakanien.ac.at/beitr/theorie/RDetrez1.pdf; Evelyn Kolm, Die Ambitionen Österreich-Ungarns im Zeitalter des Hochimperialismus, Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe 3, Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften 900 (Frankfurt et al.: Lang, 2001), 237-253; Florian Oberhuber, “Zur Konstruktion bürgerlicher imperialer Identi- tät: Gustav Ratzenhofers Vorträge zur Okkupation Bosniens und der Herzegowina,” in Habs- burg postcolonial, 277-288; Robin Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism. The Habsburg ‘Civili- zing Mission’ in Bosnia 1878-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), viii; 27-31, 57,

AUSTRIA AND THE BALKANS 195 mercial steamboats routes on the lower Danube (First Danubian Steam Naviga- tion Company; Austrian Lloyd) and by constructing railroads. It had its share in financing joint ventures and in the construction of factories and was also active in the banking and insurance sectors. In support Austro-Hungarian foreign policy tried to manipulate the commercial routes and policies of the Balkan states in its favor.11 Contemporary Austrian interests in the Balkans manifest themselves in a similar, multilayered manner. In the cultural field it is expressed in a certain attraction to “native” popular culture: what was identified in the late nineteenth century with ethnographic objects like folk costumes and handicrafts – mainly from Bosnia – is mirrored today in the beat of popular music subsumed under the title “Balkan brass”.12 Austrian interest in local “popular culture,” which is

171, 178, 192, 220; Ursula Reber, “Periphere Angelegenheiten/Angelegenheiten der Periphe- rie: Einschreibungen in eine Karte von ‘Adiáphora,’” in Habsburg postcolonial, 231-242, Re- ber, “Habsburgische Begegnungen mit nomadischen Kriegerstämmen. Montenegro als strate- gischer Schauplatz,” September 26, 2006, accessed December 31, 2011, http://www.kakanien.ac.at/beitr/fallstudie/UReber4.pdf; Diana Reynolds, “Kavaliere, Kostü- me, Kunstgewerbe: Die Vorstellungen Bosniens in Wien 1878-1900,” in Habsburg postcolonial, 243-258; Clemens Ruthner, “K. u. k. Kolonialismus als Befund, Befindlichkeit und Me- tapher: Versuch einer weiteren Klärung, ” in Habsburg postcolonial, 111-128; Ruthner, “Habsburg’s Little Orient. A Post/Colonial Reading of Austrian and German Cultural Narra- tives on Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1878-1918,” May 22, 2008, accessed December 31, 2011, http://www.kakanien.ac.at/beitr/fallstudie/CRuthner5.pdf; Peter Stachel, “Der koloniale Blick auf Bosnien-Herzegowina in der ethnographischen Popularliteratur der Habsburgermonar- chie,” in Habsburg postcolonial, 259-276. 11 Horst Haselsteiner, ed. Wirtschafts- und Kulturbeziehungen zwischen dem Donau- und dem Balkanraum seit dem Wiener Kongress, Zur Kunde Südosteuropas II/17 (Graz: Institut für Geschichte/Abteilung für Südosteurop. Geschichte); Peter Hertner, “The Balkan Railways, In- ternational Banking from the End of the 19 th Century until the Outbreak of the First World War. A paper presented at the EABH Annual Conference ‘Finance and Modernisation’, Wien, 20–21 May 2005,” Bulgarian National Bank Discussion Papers 53 (Sofia: Bulgarian National Bank) (2006), also online, accessed December 31, 2011, http://www.scribd.com/doc/ 21995233/The-Balkan-Railways; Dževad Juzbašić, Izgradnja željeznica u Bosni i Hercego- vini u svjetlu austrougarske politike od okupacije do kraja Kallayeve ere, Akademija nauka i umjetnosti Bosne i Hercegovine/Odjeljenje društvenih nauka. Djela XLVIII/28 (Sarajevo: ANUBiH, 1974); Juzbašić, Politika i privreda u Bosni i Hercegovini pod austrougarskom up- ravom, Akademija Nauka i Umjetnosti Bosne i Hercegovine/Odjeljenje Društvenih Nauka. Posebna izdanja 35 (Sarajevo: ANUBiH, 2002), 49-176; Kolm, Die Ambitionen Österreich- Ungarns; Franz-Josef Kos, Die politischen und wirtschaftlichen Interessen Österreich- Ungarns und Deutschlands in Südosteuropa 1912/13: Die Adriahafen-, die Saloniki- und die Kavallafrage, Zur Kunde Südosteuropas II/20 (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar: Böhlau, 1996); Emil Palotás, “Die außenwirtschaftlichen Beziehungen zum Balkan und zu Russland,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie im System der internationalen Beziehungen, 1. Teilband, 584-629; Rumjana Prešlenova, “Bulgarisch-österreichisch-ungarische Wirtschaftsbeziehungen 1878- 1914,” in Bulgarisch-österreichische Beziehungen 1878-1996, ed. Christo Choliolčev, Karl- heinz Mack and Arnold Suppan, Miscellanea Bulgarica 12 (Vienna: Verein “Freunde des Hauses Wittgenstein,” 1998), 18-29; Kurt Wessely, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Bosnien-Herzegowina,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie im System der internationalen Bezie- hungen, 1. Teilband, 528-566. 12 Regina Bendix, “Ethnology, Cultural Reification, and the Dynamics of Difference in the Kronprinzenwerk,” in Creating the Other, 149-166; Reynolds, “Kavaliere, Kostüme, Kun- stgewerbe.” 196 CHRISTIAN PROMITZER in part perceived as “exotic” and “arachaic,”13 today only rarely reaches beyond the Bohemian circles of Vienna and other larger Austrian cities. It is not part of official cultural policy, as was the case in the late Habsburg Monarchy. This has to do with the fact that the political climate in contemporary Austria, which has yet to fully come to terms with its National Socialist past and only com- pleted its nation-building project in the second half of the twentieth century, is much more provincial and xenophobic than in the late nineteenth century. But we should not forget that these dynastic (multi-) cultural policies were mainly a top-down project that in turn stimulated already existing provincial, xenophobic, and nationalist resentments among the emerging elites of the monarchy’s German population. The latter would, in turn, contribute to the historical stock of modern negative stereotypes about the Balkans, which are so widely dissem- inated within large parts of the Austrian society. In any case, intellectual and cultural circles in Austria – clearly a minority, but one that could form a critical mass – are interested in the “culture” of the Balkans, but in a manner that hinders the development of a critical understanding of the Austrian role in the region that might allow for a major discussion to be initiated. The region is reduced to a concomitant of real interests of a part of the Austrian economic elite, which in turn has established itself as a regional player making profitable investments. During the “short twentieth century,” Austrian economic interests in the Balkans disappeared into the background, a result of changed geopolitical contexts and a thorough reconfiguration of the state both in size character, but they never disappeared completely.14 During the Nazi period, German interests in the Balkans expressed themselves in terms of economic “supplementation,” i.e. exploitation, within the framework of the “Mitteleuropäische Wirtschaftstag” (Central European Economic Conference), as well as in scholarly “Südostforschung” which, among other things, was to prepare and underpin plans that included the deportation of large parts of diverse populations. In both cases Austrian expertise played a considerable role.15

13 See Ulf Brunnbauer, “Europa und sein Balkan. Ein Essay über die Macht der Vorstellung”, in Handbuch der Eurolinguistik, ed. Uwe Hinrichs (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz), 91-110. 14 Peter Bachmaier, “Die Rolle der Kulturpolitik in den Beziehungen zwischen Österreich und Bulgarien 1962-2008,” in Österreich und Bulgarien 1878-2008, 251-270; Otmar Höll, ed., Österreich – Jugoslawien: Determinanten und Perspektiven ihrer Beziehungen, Österreichi- sches Institut für Internationale Politik: Forschungsberichte 10 (Vienna: Braumüller, 1988); Arnold Suppan, Jugoslawien und Österreich 1918-1938. Bilaterale Außenpolitik im europäi- schen Umfeld, Veröffentlichungen des Österreichischen Ost- und Südosteuropa-Instituts 14 (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik et al., 1996). 15 Christian Promitzer, “Täterwissenschaft: Das Südostdeutsche Institut in Graz”, in Südostfor- schung im Schatten, 93-114; Carola Sachse, ed., “Mitteleuropa” und “Südosteuropa” als Planungsraum. Wirtschafts- und kulturpolitische Expertisen im Zeitalter der Weltkriege, Dik- taturen und ihre Überwindung im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert 4 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010). AUSTRIA AND THE BALKANS 197

TRAVELOGUES AS SOURCES OF REGION-BUILDING

The contexts of the geopolitical position of the Habsburg Monarchy vis-à-vis the Balkans in the decades before the First World War and of modern Austria towards this region after the political regime change in Eastern Central and Southeastern Europe after 1989 have determined in each case the scope of scholarship in the broadest sense of the meaning, namely including travelogues and intelligence. Scholars and experts in turn either followed or prepared the multilayered economic and political interests of their respective community. Here I can only touch on the problem by concentrating on the role of scholarly Balkan travelogues by authors who were subjects of the Austrian and, after 1867, Austria-Hungary Empire or acted on behalf of this state, and whose work has contributed to the establishment of Austro-Hungarian expertise on this part of the European continent from the mid-1830s up to the First Balkan War of 1912. In the second half of the nineteenth century the scientific value of the genre of travelogues was already in decline as compared to their role in the preceding hundred years. But still, for regions which were not fully explored, the qualitative and statistical information they contained provided insights that were of use both for foreign politics and economic interests. Some travelers were even the first to draw detailed maps of the region they had visited and therefore contributed to the cartographic imagination of regions in the literal sense of the term. The clustering of travelogues on a given geographical area by explorers originating from a particular body politic in turn could produce the area’s perception of a region, given that an interest in the part of power holders and elites in this body politic existed. Thus, in 1887, with the strong position of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans in mind, the geographer Albrecht Penck (1858-1945) at the time professor at the University of Vienna, expressed the view that the Orient alone, which in his definition extended from the borders of the Monarchy through to the Middle East, was the sole hope for Austrian geography: “The Orient is the only spot on earth where Austrian explorers are able to pursue their profession successfully, for here they are not dependent on any power, while everywhere else they are disadvantaged in the competition with travelers from other states.”16 This indicative quotation shows that the period between the 1830s and the Bal- kan Wars can be treated as the central period for the accumulation and interpretation of knowledge about the Balkan Peninsula by Austrian travelers. The diverse interests of the Habsburg Monarchy in the Balkans for the preceding period notwithstanding,17 we can observe a considerable increase in the number

16 Albrecht Penck, Ziele der Erdkunde in Österreich. Vortrag, gehalten in der k. k. geographischen Gesellschaft in Wien am 22. November 1887 (Vienna – Olmütz: Roller & Comp., 1889), 7. 17 See Bertsch, Anton Prokesch von Osten; Boro Bronza, “Habzburška politika prema Zapadnom Balkanu: 1780-1815” (Master’s thesis, University of Banja Luka, 2005); Ulrike Tischler, Die habsburgische Politik gegenüber den Serben und Montenegrinern 1791-1822: Förderung oder Vereinnahmung?, Südosteuropäische Arbeiten 108 (Munich: Oldenbourg

198 CHRISTIAN PROMITZER of Austrian texts on this region after the introduction of commercial steamship lines on the lower Danube in the mid-1830s and the end of the hitherto periodi- cal epidemics in the early 1840s, which led to the shortening and after the Cri- mean War elimination of the quarantines at the Habsburg border with the Ot- toman Empire.18 The Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, on the other hand, can be considered the end of this period, when Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria suc- ceeded in driving the Ottoman Empire almost completely from the Balkan Pen- insula and began to see themselves as independent regional factors vis-à-vis the Habsburg Monarchy. Despite the importance of this period for the acquisition of knowledge about the Balkan Peninsula, no major work on this period is extant for travelers from Austria-Hungary.19 Academic literature on travelogues from the German- speaking countries in general – which also treats Austrian authors – does exist, however, but its level of elaboration remains positivist and tends to treat the respective authors in uncritical, affirmative terms.20 Several monographs and articles have dealt with Western travelogue traditions in individual Balkan states including Albania,21 Bosnia-Herzegovina,22 Bulgaria,23 Macedonia,24

2000); see also the following documentation: Gertraud Marinelli-König, Die Südslaven in den Wiener Zeitschriften und Almanachen des Vormärz (1805-1848), Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften: Sitzungsberichte Phil.-Hist. Klasse 603 (Vienna: Verlag der Öster- reichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1994). 18 Christian Promitzer, “Stimulating the hidden dispositions of South-eastern Europe – the plague in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29 and the introduction of quarantine on the lower Danube,” in Medicine within and between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires: 18th-19th centuries, ed. Theodora D. Sechel (Bochum: Winkler Publishers, 2011), 79-110. 19 We dispose, however, of an insightful volume on non-German travel writing on Europe in general – cf. Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis, eds., Under Eastern Eyes. A Com- parative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe, East Looks West 2 (Buda- pest – New York: CEU Press, 2008). The period of the Balkan Wars and the First World War has been the subject of Mechthild Golczewski, Der Balkan in deutschen und österreichischen Reise- und Erlebnisberichten 1912-1918, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des östlichen Europa 16 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1981). 20 Zoran Konstantinović, Deutsche Reisebeschreibungen über Serbien und Montenegro, Südost- europäische Arbeiten 56 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1960); Wolfgang Geier, Südosteuropa- Wahrnehmungen: Reiseberichte, Studien und biographische Skizzen vom 16. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, Studien der Forschungsstelle Ostmitteleuropa an der Universität Dortmund 39 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2006). 21 Fatos Baxhaku and Karl Kaser, Die Stammesgesellschaften Nordalbaniens. Berichte und Forschungen österreichischer Konsuln und Gelehrter (1861-1917) (Vienna – Cologne - Weimar: Böhlau, 1996); Kurt Gostentschnigg, “Zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik: Die ös- terreichisch-ungarische Albanologie 1867-1918” (PhD diss: University of Graz, 1996); Gostentschnigg, “Pleksja e Albanologjisë austro-hungareze me interesat politikë të Monarkisë së Dyfishtë [The entanglement of Austro-Hungarian Albanian Studies with the political interests oft he Double Monarchy],” Studime Albanologjike 2-3 (1997): 44-52; Stephen Minta, “Albania,” in Literature of Travel and Exploration: an Encyclopedia, ed. Jennifer Speake, vol. 1 (New York, London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003), 9-11. 22 Milorad Ekmečić, “Slika o Bosni i Hercegovini u evropskoj putopisnoj literaturi od 1850 do 1878 godine,” Balcanica 8 (1977): 301-320; Ekmečić, “Das Bild Bosniens und der Herzego- wina in der europäischen Reiseliteratur der Jahre von 1850-1878,” in Reisen und Reisebe- schreibungen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert als Quellen der Kulturbeziehungsforschung, ed. Bo- ris I. Krasnobaev, Gert Robel and Herbert Zeman, Studien zur Geschichte der Kulturbezie- hungen in Mittel- und Osteuropa 6 (Essen: Hobbing, 1987), 195-214; Denisa Gibović, “Das

AUSTRIA AND THE BALKANS 199

Montenegro,25 and Serbia.26 They all address authors from Austria-Hungary, although rarely in a consistent way. There also exists an otherwise useful historical survey on Austrian ethnographic literature which also addresses travelogues, although not exhaustively.27 But a general overview of Austrian travelogues for the period in question – similar to what Maria Todorova did for French, Anglo-American and Russian narratives28 or as Božidar Jezernik man- aged to realize for representative texts in the main Western languages by re- grouping them according by topic29 – has yet to be written. A recent monograph on Austrian travelogues from that period duly touches the Balkans, and has developed a critical understanding with respect to the investigated texts by applying Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism, but it concentrates on Austrian representations of the Orient in general, and in doing so focuses on the Middle East and North Africa.30 Projects that look to fill this gap will not be able to avoid some form of discourse analysis in general and Todorova’s “Imagining the Balkans” in particular, a critical discussion of Edward Said’s “Orientalism” in which the author developed her own convincing and in the meantime widespread concept of “Balkanism.” For the Austrian case, André Gingrich’s concept of “frontier Orientalism” is of pivotal importance. Gingrich developed this concept in an analysis of the ideological production of Austrian texts on Muslims, the Otto- man Empire, and the Balkans as a border zone.31 Gingrich’s concept is all the

Bild von Bosnien-Herzegowina in der österreichischen Literatur zwischen 1878 und 1918” (Master’s thesis: University of Vienna, 1999.); Amira Žmirić, “Austrijski i njemački putopisi o Bosni i Hercegovini do 1941. godine” (PhD diss., Univerzitet u Novom Sadu, 2008); Amira Žmirić, “Austrijski oficiri kao pisci putopisa o Bosni i Hercegovini,” Riječ 3-4 (2010): 159- 165. 23 Petar Miyatev, Madzharski patepisi za Balkanite: XVI-XIX v. (Sofia: Nauka i Izkustvo, 1976); Ventseslava Behinova, Balgariya prez pogleda na cheshki pateshestvenitsi: Patepisi (Sofia: Otechestven Front, 1984) and Ivan Snegarov, Balgarskite zemi prez pogleda na chuzhdi pateshestvenitsi: 1828-1853 (Sofia: Akad. izdat. “Prof. Marin Drinov” 1997). 24 Aleksandar Matkovski, Makedonija vo delata na stranskite patopisci, 11 vol. (Skopje: Gju- rgja, 1991-2008). 25 František Šistek, “Crna Gora u češkim putopisima (1890-1914),” Matica: časopis za društve- na pitanja, nauku i kulturu 9 (32-33) (2007-2008): 101-132. 26 Vladimir Stojančević, Viđeni stranci o Srbiji i Srbima 19. i početkom 20. veka (Beograd: Institut za političke studije – Čigoja štampa, 1998); Đorđe Kostić, ed., Beograd u delima evropskih putopisaca / Belgrade in the works of european travel writers, Balkanološki institut – Posebna izdanja 80 (Belgrade: Balkanološki institut SANU, 2003). 27 Siegfried Gruber, “Austrian Contributions to the Ethnological Knowledge of the Balkans since 1850,” Ethnologia Balkanica, Journal for Southeast European Anthropology 2 (1998): 209-224. 28 Todorova, Imagining the Balkans; see also Hammond, The debated lands. 29 Božidar Jezernik, Wild Europe. The Balkans in the gaze of Western travellers (London: Saqi Books, 2004). 30 Veronika Bernard, Österreicher im Orient: Eine Bestandsaufnahme österreichischer Reiseli- teratur im 19. Jahrhundert, Literatur aus Österreich und Bayern 9 (Vienna: Holzhausen, 1996). 31 André Gingrich, “Frontier Myths of Orientalism. The Muslim World in Public and Popular Cultures of Central Europe,” in Mess. Mediterranean Ethnological Summer School 2, eds Bo- jan Baskar and Borut Brumen (Ljubljana: Inštitut za multikulturne raziskave, 1998), 99-127; Gingrich, “Kulturgeschichte, Wissenschaft und Orientalismus. Zur Diskussion des ‘frontier

200 CHRISTIAN PROMITZER more plausible when we consider it within the context older stereotypes as they are expressed in the so-called “Völkertafeln” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which show the perceived ethnic hierarchies within the family of European nations and whose effect reverberates well into the nineteenth century.32 Frontier Orientalism focuses on the immediate neighborhood of the Bal- kans and Central Europe. But it could also be of use the the comparison of specific traits in the use of stereotypes about the Balkans in Austrian texts with their pendants from other Western countries, since frontier Orientalism is not an “elite” Orientalism, but a phenomenon that – due to a real Ottoman threat in the past – could be found in the whole population. The fact that the Ottoman “threat” was once a real threat, the Ottomans twice having laid siege to Vienna, is the second element that makes frontier Orientalism different from other Western variants of Orientalism that describe the Orientals as weak and inferi- or.33 In the case of the specific relations of the Habsburg Monarchy to the Bal- kans, the use of postcolonial concepts seems to be of even greater use than in other cases, all the more if we interpret the notion of the “colonial” in a broader sense of the meaning. The Croatian philosopher Rada Iveković has argued that while the expansive submission of non-European cultures stood for an outer European imperialism, a lesser manifest inner imperialism might be diagnosed in the domination of “peripheral” cultures in the East and Southeast of the continent.34 Consequently, the interpretation of Austrian travelogues will have to take into account Clemens Ruthner‘s argument that Austria-Hungary, although not a colonial empire in the narrower sense of the meaning, at least in Bosnia- Herzegovina realized symbolic forms of domination, the images it conveyed being similar to those of oversees colonial rule.35 We can further assume that Austrian travelogues on the Balkans do not reflect such symbolic forms of domination alone; they also form a representative discursive cluster of how this region should be read by its readership. Still another point will be to assess the role of these travelogues in the creation of persistent stereotypes about the “wild”, “aboriginal”, “filthy”, and “backward” Balkans, whereby a special fo- cus must be on the recurrence of intertextuality. It appears that ascriptions of this kind did not only contribute to the establishment of hierarchical symbolic geographies of Europe; they also played their part in a complex game among

orientalism’ in der Spätzeit der k. u. k. Monarchie,” in Schauplatz Kultur – Zentraleuropa: transdisziplinäre Annäherungen, Moritz Csáky zum 70. Geburtstag gewidmet, ed. Johannes Feichtinger et al, Gedächtnis – Erinnerung – Identität 7 (Innsbruck et al.: Studien-Verlag, 2006), 279-288. 32 See Zoran Konstantinović, “‘Tirk oder Griech.’ Zur Kontamination ihrer Epitheta,” in Euro- päischer Völkerspiegel: Imagologisch-ethnographische Studien zu den Völkertafeln des frü- hen 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. Franz K. Stanzel (Heidelberg: Winter1999), 299-314. 33 See the concise summary of frontier Orientalism in Baskar, “‘The first Slovenian Poet,’” 107- 108. 34 Rada Iveković, “Die Spaltung der Vernunft und der postkoloniale Gegenschlag,” in Eigene und andere Fremde: “postkoloniale” Konflikte im europäischen Kontext, ed. Wolfgang Mül- ler-Funk and Birgit Wagner, kultur.wissenschaften 8.4 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2005), 48-64. 35 Ruthner, “K. u. k. Kolonialismus,” 114. AUSTRIA AND THE BALKANS 201 the political elites of the Habsburg Monarchy in their discussions of whether the Balkans should be best be dealt with by means of well-minded, one-sided cultural paternalism or (often collaterally) be means of power politics and bald economic and political domination.

TEXTS AND AUTHORS

Who are the authors whose texts would come into question for a potential read- er of Austrian travelogues on the Balkans? Any list would be incomplete. Would it make sense to start with the diplomat and orientalist Anton von Prokesch-Osten (1795-1876) or rather with the geologist and physician Ami Boué (1794-1881)?36 In any case, we can assume that the texts written by Prokesch-Osten and Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856) were read by most of the authors of succeeding travelogues. Boué, in turn, seems to have introduced an encyclopedic tradition, reminiscent of Alexander von Hum- boldt’s Latin American travels. In 1840 Boué published a four-volume com- pendium in the French language on “Turkey in Europe” based on his travels that was translated into German after his death.37 It would also be useful to study the impressions of Ida Pfeiffer (1797-1858), one of the rare female travelers of her time, during her steamboat journey down the lower Danube, even if in her case the Balkans were only a thoroughfare to the Holy Land as the prop- er destination of her journey.38 A survey of Austrian explores must not exclude Johann Georg Hahn (1811-

36 Bertsch, Anton Prokesch von Osten; on Boué see Tillfried Cernajsek, “Zum 120. Todestag von Ami Boué (1794-1881). Einige Anmerkungen zu seinem Nachlass an der Bibliothek der Geologischen Bundesanstalt,” in Geschichte der Erdwissenschaften in Österreich. 3. Sympo- sium, 27.-29. September 2001, Hallstatt, ed. Christoph Hauser (Vienna: Geolog. Bundesanst, 2001), 27-28; Wolfgang Geier and Jürgen M.Wagener, eds., Ami Boué: 1794-1881. Leben und ausgewählte Schriften (Melle: Wagener, 2006); Wolfgang Geier, “Ami Boué in der Süd- osteuropa-Kunde des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Eduard Suess und die Entwicklung der Erdwissen- schaften zwischen Biedermeier und Sezession, ed. Johannes Seidl (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2009), 229-244; Dimitar Raykov, “Balkanskite prouchvaniya na Ami Bue,” Makedonski pregled 19 (1996): 35-36. 37 Ami Boué, La Turquie d’Europe, 4 vol. (Vienna: Braumüller, 1840); Boué, Die Europäische Türkei, 2 vol. (Vienna: Friedrich Tempsky, 1889). 38 Ida Pfeiffer, Reise einer Wienerin ins heilige Land, nämlich: von Wien nach Konstantinopel […] Unternommen im März bis Dezember 1842 […] (Vienna: Jakob Dirnböck, 1844); Gab- riele Habinger, Ida Pfeiffer. Eine Forschungsreisende des Biedermeier, Feministische Theorie 44 (Vienna: Milena, 2004); Ida Pfeiffer, ‘Wir leben nach Matrosenweise.’ Briefe einer Welt- reisenden des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Gabriele Habinger (Vienna: Promedia, 2008); Hiltgund Jehle, “Ida Pfeiffer – eine biographische Skizze,” in Ida Pfeiffer, Verschwörung im Regen- wald. Ida Pfeiffers Reise nach Madagaskar im Jahre 1857 (Basel: Lenos, 1991); Oskar Pfeif- fer, “Ida Pfeiffer nach ihren eigenen Aufzeichnungen. Biographische Skizze,” in Ida Pfeiffer, Reise nach Madagaskar. Nebst einer Biographie der Verfasserin, vol 1 (Vienna: Carl Ge- rold’s Sohn,1861), vi-liii; Christina Ujma, “Pfeiffer, Ida (1797-1858) Austrian Traveler and Travel Writer,” in Literature of Travel and Exploration: an Encyclopedia, vol. 2, ed. Jennifer Speake (New York, London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003), 935-937. 202 CHRISTIAN PROMITZER

1869), who became known as the founder of Albanian studies with his monograph of 1854 published under this name.39 He greatly influenced the further course of Albanian studies. Among his successors in Austria-Hungary were the diplomat Theodor von Ippen (1861-1935) and the aristocratic traveler Franz Nopcsa (1877-1933). Hahn and the army officer Paić und Scherb, who published on is experiences in Montenegro,40 appear to be the key Austrian propagators of the trope of the Albanian and Montenegrin folk hero and their romantic lives as free highlanders.41 The latter would find a late echo in Herman Bahr’s description of his travels through Dalmatia in the early twentieth century.42 In the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina it is worthwhile to compare the work of Johann Roskiewicz (1831-1902),43 who reveals the Austrian interests in this region already during late Ottoman rule, with the expeditions of the archaeolo- gist Moriz Hoernes (1852-1917) who travelled through this province shortly after the Austro-Hungarian occupation.44 That a volume of Hoernes’ impressions on Bosnia-Herzegovina was published in Friedrich Umlauft’s ethno- graphical series on the Monarchy says much about the “symbolic incorpora- tion” of Bosnia-Herzegovina into Austria-Hungary.45 Preliminary studies have shown that Hoernes‘ perception of Bosnia’s occupation is a “genuinely coloni-

39 Johann Georg Hahn, Albanesische Studien (Jena: Friedrich Mauke, 1854); Gostentschnigg, “Zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik,” 34-39; Gostentschnigg, “‘Hulumtime në terren’ në Shqipëri në rastin e udhëtimeve të Johann Georg von Hahn-it dhe Franz Baron Nopcsa-s rreth mesit të shekullit 19 dhe në fillim të shekullit 20 [‘Field research’ in Albania in the mid-19th century and in the early 20th century illustrated by the travels of Johann Georg von Hahn and Franz Baron Nopcsa],” Hylli i Dritës 26 (3) (250) (2006): 43-51; Gerhard Grimm, Johann Georg von Hahn (1811-1869): Leben und Werk, Albanische Forschungen 1 (Wiesbaden: Har- rassowitz, 1964). 40 Paić und Scherb, Cèrnagora. Eine umfassende Schilderung des Landes und der Bewohner von Cèrnagora (Montenegro) (Agram: Franz Suppan, 1846). 41 See Sabine Wienker-Piepho, Frauen als Volkshelden: Geschichtlichkeit, Legendenbildung und Typologie, Artes Populares Studia Ethnographica et Folkloristica 16 (Frankfurt et al.: Lang, 1988), 168; Nebojša Čagorović and Cathie Carmichael, “Constructing and rethinking Montenegrin national identity,” Narodna umjetnost: Croatian Journal of Ethnology and Folk- lore Research 43 (1) (2006): 59-74; Reber, “Habsburgische Begegnungen;” Brunnbauer, “Eu- ropa und sein Balkan.” 42 Hermann Bahr, Dalmatinische Reise (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1909/3rd edition), 47-50. 43 Johann Roskiewicz, Karte von Bosnien, der Hercegovina und des Paschaliks von Novibazar (Vienna: Militärgeographisches Institut, 1865); Roskiewicz, Studien über Bosnien und die Herzegovina (Vienna – Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1868); Peter Broucek, “Roskiewicz, Johann,” in Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815-1950, vol. 9 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichi- schen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1986), 257; Ekmečić, “Das Bild Bosniens,” 198. 44 Moriz Hoernes, Dinarische Wanderungen. Cultur- & und Landschaftsbilder aus Bosnien und der Hercegovina (Vienna: Carl Graeser, 1894/2nd, augmented edition [1888]); Hoernes, Bos- nien und die Hercegovina, Die Länder Oesterreich-Ungarns in Wort und Bild 15 (Vienna: Carl Graeser, 1889); N. N., “Personalstand,” Almanach der Akademie der Wissenschaften 68 (1918): 426-433; N. N. “Hoernes, Moriz,” in Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815- 1950, vol. 2 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1959), 368- 369. 45 Stijn Vervaet, “‘Na granicama civilizovane Evrope.’ Austrougarska tekstualna kolonizacija Bosne i Hercegovine (1878-1918),” Sveske Zadužbine Ive Andrića 24 (2007): 90-126. AUSTRIA AND THE BALKANS 203 al” one.46 Another informative comparison is that of Bulgaria as it is described during late Ottoman rule and thereafter, in the first case the geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter (1829-1884),47 who in the late 1860s traveled through the European part of the Ottoman Empire in order to conduct geological investigations for the planned railroad line that would link Istanbul with Central Europe. Hochstetter focused on the economic potential of the country that European investors could exploit after the construction of the railroad.48 The Czech historian Konstantin Josef Jireček (1854-1918), by contrast, applies a multilayered and less paternalist approach in his encyclopedic description of the young Prin- cipality of Bulgaria based on his stay in this country from 1879 until the mid- 1880s during which time he organized the national education system.49 Another geologist, a student of Hochstetter and also expert on Bulgaria, is Franz Toula (1845-1917), of interest because he is one of the few Austrian travelers to have written on the Dobrudja.50 Among Austrian authors, Felix Kanitz (1829-1904) takes the central place in the encyclopedic description of Serbia. He undertook his numerous travels to Serbia and Bulgaria partly at the behest of the Austro-Hungarian ministry of foreign affairs. The style of his monographs, which he illustrated with his own drawings, is marked by the attempt to combine literary, educational and scientific aspirations. He concentrates his writing on ethnography, history, cartog- raphy and Byzantine art in the Balkans.51

46 Stachel, “Der koloniale Blick,” 267; see also Ruthner, “Habsburg’s little Orient,” 9, 11. 47 See N. N., “Hochstetter, Ferdinand von,” in Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815- 1950, vol. 2 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1959), 345; Sascha Nolden, “Ferdinand Hochstetter (1829-1884) und die Novara-Expedition in Neusee- land,” Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 136-137 (2007): 15-30. 48 Ferdinand Hochstetter, “Reise durch Rumelien im Sommer 1869,” Mittheilungen der kais. und königl. Geographischen Gesellschaft in Wien 13 (1871): 193-212, 350-358, 545-552, 585-606, Mittheilungen der kais. und königl. Geographischen Gesellschaft in Wien 14 (1872): 65-80, 161-180, 324-341; 15: 112-130. 49 Josef Konstantin Jireček, Cesty po Bulharsku, Novočeská bibliothéka 27 / Spisů musejních 160 (Praguee: Nákladem Matice české, v kommissi u Františka Řivnáče,1888); Constantin Jireček, Das Fürstentum Bulgarien, seine Bodengestaltung, Natur, Bevölkerung, wirtschaftliche Zustände, geistige Cultur, Staatsverfassung, Staatsverwaltung und neueste Geschichte, vol. 2 (Prague et al.: Friedrich Tempsky, 1891); Konstantin Yosif Irechek, Knyazhestvo Bal- gariya. Negova povarhnina, priroda, naselenie, duhovna kultura, upravlenie i novejsha isto- riya (Plovdiv: Danov, 1899); Bulgarisches Forschungsinstitut in Österreich, ed., Constantin Jirecek, sein schöpferisches Wirken und sein wissenschaftliches Erbe, Mitteilungen des Bul- garischen Forschungsinstitutes in Österreich 3/2 (Vienna: Verein “Freunde des Palais Witt- genstein,” 1980); Alojz Ivanišević and Jens Oliver Schmitt, “Konstantin Josef Jireček 1854- 1918),” in Osteuropäische Geschichte in Wien: 100 Jahre Forschung und Lehre an der Uni- versität, eds. : Arnold Suppan, Maria Wakounigg and Georg Kastner (Innsbruck: Studien- Verlag, 2007), 41-89; Petar Miyatev, ed., Iz arhiva na Konstantin Irechek, 3 vol. (Sofia: BAN, 1953-1963). 50 Franz Toula, “Eine geologische Reise in die Dobrudscha,” Schriften des Vereins zur Verbrei- tung naturwissenschaftlicher Kenntnisse in Wien 33 (1893): 543- 604; August Rosiwal, “† Professor Franz Toula,” Verhandlungen der geologischen Staatsanstalt 1-2 (1920): 41-49. 51 Felix Kanitz, Serbien. Historisch-ethnographische Reisestudien aus den Jahren 1859-1868. Mit 40 Illustrationen im Texte, 20 Tafeln und einer Karte (Leipzig: Hermann Fries, 1868);

204 CHRISTIAN PROMITZER

While some of these authors held posts as university professors or were dip- lomats, army officers or renowned polymaths, another group of men active in last decades of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century earned either somewhat ambiguous reputations as adventurers or were famed for other reasons. The ethnographer Friedrich Salomo Krauss (1859-1938), for example, was never quite accepted as a university scholar in part because of his pioneer- ing preoccupation with sexology.52 He did ethnographic and sexological research among the South Slavs. Any deeper going analysis of his work would also have to include his specific position as Jewish scholar and a comparison with Balkan ethnographers of German nationality, like Karl Hron (1852-1912) or Arthur Haberlandt (1889-1964). In 1889 the journalist Spiridon Gopčević (1855-1936) published an allegedly

Kanitz, Donau-Bulgarien und der Balkan. Historisch-geographisch-ethnographische Reise- studien aus den Jahren 1860-1879, 3vol. (Leipzig: Hermann Fries, 1875-1879); Kanitz, Das Königreich Serbien und das Serbenvolk von der Römerzeit bis zur Gegenwart, 3 vol. (Leipzig: Bernh. Meyer, 1904-1914); Bulgarian Historical Review 24 (1996): 53-164; Géza Fehér, Kanitz Fülöp Félix, “A Balkàn Kolumbusa” élete és munkássága 1829-1904 (Buda- pest: Franklin Társulat, 1932) – see the Bulgarian translation: Feher Geza, Feliks F. Kanits – Zhivot, patuvaniya i nauchno delo, Balgarska biblioteka 19 (Sofia, BAN, 1936), also online, accessed January 1, 2012, http://www.promacedonia.org/gf/; Edit Király, “Die Zärtlichkeit des Kartographen. Die Reiseberichte von Felix Kanitz,” in Zentren, Peripherien und kollektive Identitäten, 239-254; Konstantinović, Deutsche Reisebeschreibungen, 94-107; Đorđe Kostić, “Felix Kanitz und die Serben,” in: Serben und Deutsche: Traditionen der Gemein- samkeit gegen Feindbilder, ed. Gabriella Schubert, Zoran Konstantinović and Ulrich Zwiener, Schriften des Collegium Europaeum Jenense 28 (Jena – Erlangen: Palm & Enke, 2003), 207- 233; Kostić, ed., Balkanbilder von Felix Kanitz (Belgrade: Nationalmuseum, 2011); Friedhil- de Krause, “Deutsche Reisende über Serbien und Montenegro um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhun- derts – Friedrich August II., Heinrich Stieglitz und Felix Kanitz,” in Serben und Deutsche, 183-205; Gordana Milošević, “Feliks Kanic, crtač arhitekture Beograda i okoline,” in Beo- grad u delima evropskih putopisaca, 247- 262; “Tagung Felix Philipp Kanitz (1829-1904). Seine Forschungen über Bulgarien und die Balkanländer,” Mitteilungen des Bulgarischen Forschungsinstituts in Österreich 2 (7) (1985): 9-95; Johann Weiss, “Felix Kanitz, ein Pionier der Balkanforschung,” Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft 73 (1930): 5-21; Olga Zirojević and Milan Prodanović, “Kanitz – the Witness of the End of the Turco-Osmanlian Civilization in Serbia,” Bulgarian Historical Review 24 (1996): 107-111. 52 Friedrich S. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven (Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1885); Raymond L. Burt, Friedrich Salomo Krauss (1859-1983): Selbstzeugnisse und Materialien zur Biblio- graphie des Volkskundlers, Literaten und Sexualforschers mit einem Nachlassverzeichnis, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Gegenwartsvolkskunde, Sonderband 3 (Vienna: Verlag der Ös- terreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1990); Christoph Daxelmüller, “Friedrich Sa- lomo Krauss (1859-1983),” in Völkische Wissenschaft. Gestalten und Tendenzen der deutschen und österreichischen Volkskunde in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Wolf- gang Jacobeit, Hannjost Lixfeld and Olaf Bockhorn (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar: Böhlau, 1994), 463-476; Gerlinde Haid, “Friedrich Salomo Krauss (1859–1938). An Austrian folk music researcher with multicultural visions,” in Glasba in manjšine, ed Svanibor Pettan (Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, 2001), 139-148; Peter Horwath and Miroljub Joković, Friedrich Salomo Krauss (1859-1938): folklorista, etnograf, seksolog (Belgrade – Novi Sad: Institut za jugoslovenske književnosti i opštu književnost, 1992); Hartmut Walravens, Schriftenver- zeichnis des Wiener Ethnologen, Sexualwissenschaftlers, Schriftstellers und Verlegers Fried- rich S. Krauss (1859-1938) (Berlin: Simon, 2010); Bernd Jürgen Warneken, “Negative Assi- milation: der Volkskundler und Ethnologe Friedrich Salomo Krauss,” in “... das Flüstern ei- nes leisen Wehens ...” Beiträge zu Kultur und Lebenswelt europäischer Juden, eds. Freddy Raphaël and Utz Jeggle (Konstanz: UVK, 2001), 149-169. AUSTRIA AND THE BALKANS 205 scientific, but for all intents and purposes Serbian nationalist monograph on Macedonia and “Old Serbia” (i.e. Kosovo).53 Gopčević‘s biographer nevertheless argues that the monograph is not the result of authentic experiences and that he was never in Kosovo.54 While his manipulations with respect the allegedly Serbian character of Macedonia have already been the topic of exhaustive research,55 his views on the mutual relations between the Serbian and Albanian populations of Kosovo, in particular with respect to the contested notion of so- called “Arnautaši” (Albanians of alleged Serbian descent), have been only addressed superficially by various authors.56 Whatever the final judgment might be, Gopčević’s monograph represents a singular attempt to combine sympa- thies for the cultural development of the Serbian nation with the aspirations of Austria-Hungary as a Great Power in the Balkans. Franz Baron Nopcsa studied geology and paleontology in Vienna and established a reputation for his geological explorations in northern Albania.57 But his fame as an adventurer was even greater, being based on the fact that in the years from 1905 to 1912 he lived with Albanian highlanders. Although a member of the Austro-Hungarian diplomatic corps, he retained an independent view of Habsburg the Balkan policy. In his case a comparison with the work of his counterpart in Albania, Theodor von Ippen, or with selected volumes of Carl Patsch‘s “Zur Kunde der Balkanhalbinsel: Reisen und Beobachtungen” (On the Study of the Balkan Peninsula: Travels and Observations”), would be of special interest. We do not know much about the adventurer Gottfried Stransky. He appears to have owned a photographic studio in Istanbul at the turn to the twentieth century and in 1903 a person with the same name escorted the Austrian geologist Franz Xaver Schaffer through southeastern part of Asia minor.58 In the

53 Spiridon Gopčević, Makedonien und Alt-Serbien (Vienna: Seidel & Sohn, 1889). 54 See Michael Heim, Spiridion Gopčević: Leben und Werk, Albanologische Forschungen 4 (Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden1966), 90-114. 55 Ibid. 56 See Karl Kaser and Martin Procházka, eds., Selbstbild und Fremdbilder der Völker des euro- päischen Ostens, Wieser-Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens 18 (Klagenfurt - Vienna: Wieser, 2006), 251-255; Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History (London: Macmillan,1998), 205; Dietmar Müller, Staatsbürger auf Widerruf. Juden und Muslime als Alteritätspartner im rumänischen und serbischen Nationscode: ethnonationale Staatsbürgerschaftskonzepte 1878- 1941, Balkanologische Veröffentlichungen 41 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005), 179-189; Oliver Jens Schmitt, Kosovo: Kurze Geschichte einer zentralbalkanischen Landschaft (Vien- na – Cologne – Weimar: Böhlau, 2008): 166. 57 Robert Elsie, ed., Reisen in den Balkan: Die Lebenserinnerungen des Franz Baron Nopcsa (Peja: Dukagjini, 2001), also online, accessed January 1, 2012, http://www.elsie.de/pdf/B2001NopcsaReisenBalkan.pdf; Gostentschnigg, “Zwischen Wissen- schaft und Politik,” 39-42; Gostentschnigg, “‘Hulumtime në terren;’” József Hála, Franz Ba- ron von Nopcsa. Anmerkungen zu seiner Familie und seine Beziehungen zu Albanien. Eine Bibliographie (Vienna: Geolog. Bundesanstalt, 1993); Gert Robel, Franz Baron Nopcsa und Albanien, Albanische Forschungen 5 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1966). 58 See “Ünlü Alman stüdyo kabinet – Gottfried Stransky,”, accessed January 1, 2012, http://urun.gittigidiyor.com/UNLU-ALMAN-STUDYO-KABINET-GOTTFRIED- STRANSKY_W0QQidZZ17389375; Franz Schaffer, “Geologische Forschungsreisen im süd- östlichen Kleinasien,” Mittheilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft 45-46 (1903): 71-125,

206 CHRISTIAN PROMITZER same year Stransky published an eyewitness account of the tense situation in at the time Ottoman Macedonia in the venerable Bulletin of the Austrian Geo- graphic Society. He appears to have been there shortly before the outbreak of the so-called Ilinden Uprising of August 1903. The report is teeming with ad- venturous depictions and is reminiscent, due to its in part dialogical structure and Stransky’s pseudonym “Jussuf Effendi”, the Balkan novels of the then widely read German author Karl May.59 It will be a major task to assess the authenticity of the report and the purpose of its publication all the more, since it seems to be the author‘s only publication.

CONCLUSION

In 2010 the Slovene anthropologist Bojan Baskar published a paper on the Ori- entalist perceptions of the Slovene poet Anton Aškerc (1856-1912), focusing on a travelogue that described Aškerc’s journey to Istanbul and his return through the Balkans in 1893. Baskar identifies “certain Austrian imperial as- sumptions and sensibilities,” a “Habsburg travel pattern,” and a “Habsburg” register through which the Slovene poet perceived the Ottoman capital. Aškerc was a member of a small nation under pressure from the dominant German culture, and he only freed himself from the discourse of his German-Austrian contemporaries on his return through regions inhabited by South Slavs, when he suddenly shifted from a Habsburg to a pan-Slavic register.60 This example shows how necessary a thorough investigation of Austrian (resp. Austro-Hungarian) travelogues written by authors who come from the very center of the Monarchy is. It is symptomatic for the persistence of historical power structures even today that – as opposed to Slovenia – such a critical understanding of these issues have not been developed in Austria yet. The vast amount of literature on individual travelers only obscures the fact that the issues of intrinsic power relations are hardly ever touched upon. The role of Aus- trian travelogues in the creation of the efficacious ideological interpretation of the Balkans as the “European other” has yet to be explored. The need for more research in this direction can best be seen, when when we consider a circumstance that is often overlooked by representatives of radical constructivism: Domination, even in the form of Gramscian cultural hegemony, is always based on economic and/or political power. To become aware of this fact is essential for exploring the internalization of stereotypical images and imaginations as a means of perpetuating such forms of domination.

here 106. 59 Gottfried Stransky, “Reise durch Albanien und Makedonien im Sommer 1903,” Mittheilungen der k. k. Geographischen Gesellschaft in Wien 46 (1903): 370-390. 60 See Baskar, “‘The first Slovenian Poet,’” 101, 102, 104.

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