Language Diversity and Loyalty in the Habsburg Army, 1868-1918 Mag

Language Diversity and Loyalty in the Habsburg Army, 1868-1918 Mag. Dr. Tamara Scheer Eingereicht als Habilitationsschrift an der Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Wien Jänner 2020 1 Table of Contents Introduction 3 Note on Sources, Methods, and Language Use 20 Part I: The Legal Framework of the Habsburg Army Language System Chapter 1: Army Reform and Military Institutions 28 Chapter 2: The Army Language System 51 Conclusion 82 Part II: The Habsburg Army Language System and the Military Personnel Chapter 3: The Rank and File 85 Chapter 4: The Officers 118 Conclusion 161 Part III: The Habsburg Army Language System in the Public Sphere Chapter 5: Garrison Life 165 Chapter 6: Language and Politics 193 Conclusion 218 Part IV: The Habsburg Army Language System during the Great War Chapter 7: The Organization of Language Diversity during Wartime 221 Chapter 8: Language Diversity on the Frontlines 244 Conclusion 264 Summary: Between Civil Rights and Practicality: The Habsburg Army Language System, 1868-1918 267 Bibliography 277 2 Introduction The Habsburg lands are renowned as the locus classicus of a polity whose ethnicities were notably marked by language. Robert Evans1 In 1938 as another major war seemed likely, the Viennese university professor Wilhelm Czermak published a study of the Habsburg army during the First World War, In deinem Lager war Österreich. Die österreichisch-ungarische Armee, wie man sie nicht kennt (In your camp was Austria. The unknown Austro-Hungarian army). The subtitle promised his readers that the author would show them the Habsburg army they had never known. During the 1920s and 1930s, hundreds of memoirs and novels were published across Central Europe that focused on the Habsburg Monarchy’s final war. Czermak may have simply wanted a catchy title to increase sales in an already saturated literary market, because for the most part the author provided a narrative that informed readers largely already knew. Like most contemporaneous authors, Czermak stressed the Habsburg army’s diversity, its mixture of ethnicities, religious affiliations, and languages, painting a picture of soldiers fighting for or against their homeland. Czermak also made an unusual assertion: he blamed the myriad languages used in the Habsburg army's regiments and battalions for its operational failures instead of the usually argued national. He briefly mentioned the reason why concluding that way: He, himself, had fought in the ranks of a Hungarian artillery regiment without speaking the language.2 However, Czermak did not indicate whether he meant operational ineffectiveness arising from that linguistic difference or if and how this difference affected the willingness to fight and the morale of the soldiers. In contrast to Czermak's assertion, however, autobiographical and military sources from wartime demonstrate that soldiers’ language diversity neither greatly hampered operations nor increased desertions. For example, the Procurement Officer Josef Leb asserted in his 1933 memoirs that “every officer commanded soldiers of all nationalities, and they would agree that diversity alone would not have caused major problems.”3 Who was correct, Czermak or Leb, or maybe both to a certain 1 Evans, Language and State Building, 1. See also: ÖStA/KA/Terr, Befehle, 13th Corps Command Zagreb/Agram, box 76, no. 70, 8 October 1911 2 Czermak, In deinem Lager war Österreich, 27-8. This argument is also apparent in literature. For example: Wawro, The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire. See also: Rauchensteiner, Der Erste Weltkrieg und das Ende der Habsburgermonarchie. 3 ÖStA/KA/NL, B/580, Josef Leb, Aus den Erinnerungen eines Trainoffiziers, unpublished manuscript, autumn 1933, 6. 3 degree? The First World War, which began in August 1914, ended with the destruction of the centuries-old Monarchy. Before the war, some Habsburg army officials had already questioned the loyalty of a number of the Monarchy’s nationalities. They even expected some of them to refuse to mobilize en masse.4 In fact, for the duration of the war, the vast majority of military- aged men fulfilled their obligations irrespective of their backgrounds.5 The policies of Austria- Hungary for the first two and a half years of the First World War eliminated many of its own Rechtsstaat traditions of respecting citizens’ rights. Of course, many European states whether empires or nation states restricted citizens’ civil rights during the war. As a result, they incurred significant popular opposition. But in the cases of Austria and Hungary, these restrictions were often framed specifically in nationalist terms as attacks on particular nationalities.6 During the war Habsburg bureaucrats and army officers increasingly accused some nationalities of being disloyal to the throne and the army.7 But what did loyalty mean in an army in which soldiers belonged to eleven recognized nationalities and languages? Drawing on years of research about the nature of loyalty and the late Habsburg Monarchy, Jana Osterkamp and Martin Schulze Wessel recently published a cross-disciplinary study, “Texturen von Loyalität: Überlegungen zu einem analytischen Begriff” (The fabric of loyalty: Reflections of an analytical term). The authors analyze this complex term, loyalty, which scholars of different disciplins so often employ. They stress that historians in particular have often used the term not as an analytical category, but rather uncritically accept the term as it is employed in the sources (Quellensprache), and are examining without interrogating the context in which the various authors were writing. Osterkamp and Schulze Wessel also argue that loyalty should not be considered only unidirectional, that is, of the citizens-subjects to the ruler. Rather, loyalty should reflect the complexity of a society and state, in particular when these two are characterized by ethnic and linguistic diversity.8 I argue that the Habsburg 4 A general suspicion was also traceable for other armed forces of that time. For example, Russian army officials suspected all Yiddish-speaking Jews being German spies because they considered Yiddish a German dialect, one that enabled Jews to conspire with the enemy: Bischitzky, and Schreiner, Einführung, 18. 5 Scheer, Ringstraßenfront, 9-10. The front experience stood in contrast to the home front experience where thousands of civilians were arrested owing to their alleged disloyalty to the state: Cornwall, The Undermining of Austria-Hungary. 6 Judson, Critical Issues for a History of the Habsburg Monarchy, 381. 7 Judson, Guardians of the Nation. 8 Osterkamp, Schulze Wessel, Texturen von Loyalität, 553-73. 4 military, owing to its administrative structure, ethnic and linguistic diversity, offered a multi- layered environment for loyalty and disloyalty during the last decades of the Monarchy. My aim is to debunk the notion that loyalty or disloyalty in a multilingual army was so often connected to people of a particular nationality, or language, and that many decisions reflected national convictions. The army is the test case par excellence for this argument, because its functioning was essential to the security of the Monarchy and due to compulsory military service, it affected annually many thousands of new conscripts. In this study, I demonstrate that the army’s language system offers an example of how the conscripts and officers were affected by the army language system, shaped it, and identified with it despite their linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. Moreover, this study contributes to what historians such as Pieter M. Judson have argued that even in the case Habsburg citizens preferred a particular language or identified with a particular nationality did not necessarily mean that they turned against the monarch and the state. I build on Judson’s notion who explores in his recent book, The Habsburg Empire: A New History that even in late modern times, the ethnically and linguistically heterogenous citizens who were loyal to their nationality as defined by language use often also identified with the state and army simultaneously.9 Unlike many historians, who have analyzed the loyalty and disloyalty of particular Habsburg nationalities, I examine the military bureaucrats, officers and conscripts who interpreted language rules, and how and why they did so. Archival sources I have examined reveal that were numerous motives for flexible interpretation of the army language system, and nationalism was only one. This is a novel perspective for the most important and widespread institution of the late Habsburg Monarchy: the army. No other study has focused on the army’s language diversity, which probably became its most important characteristic – for the military and civilians. The examples of other scholarly studies referred to throughout this book demonstrate that when dealing with the army language system four main topics have to be treated separately. In the first part of my study I analyze the legal framework and the language regulations. They stipulated that conscripts were allowed to use their language during their military service. I demonstrate that these regulations permitted elasticity in interpreting them. As a result, state authorities until 1914 were regularly asked for changes, or more suitable and clearer definitions and interpretations. Although army bureaucrats were aware of the language system’s shortcomings, between 1868 and 1914 the Ministry of War issued virtually no orders to clarify 9 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, 368. 5 and explain to army officials of how to adequately implement them. I demonstrate that the flexible interpretation of the language rules might be the result of misinterpreted or wrongly understood regulations instead of being exclusively an outcome of a particular political or national(ist) standpoint. The army language system was influenced by army bureaucrats’ conviction that every Habsburg citizen had to have a distinct nationality that was first and foremost related to the language use. The army language system did not only allow conscripts to use their native tongues during military service, but they were also obliged to serve among soldiers who spoke the same languages.

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