Nationalities without Nationalism? The Cultural Consequences of Metternich’s Nationality Policy

Abstract

The Austrian statesman Metternich is widely recognized as a leading actor in European affairs in the first half of the nineteenth century. What has been surprisingly neglected is the long-lasting impact of his nationality policy, which he devised and partly implemented within the context of restoring order after the upheavals of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The devastation and dislocations caused by two decades of warfare gave rise to a critical historical juncture in which Metternich took the lead to form a counterrevolutionary regime and to pursue what can be termed his empire project. A state modernizer, he devised an intellectually elaborate conservative response to the French Revolution that rested on his distinction between supposedly natural nationalities and artificial nationalism. The resulting idiosyncratic governance of empire fostered a vertical integration of societies-in-the-making through the expansion of state infrastructures, while at the same time determining horizontal fragmentation along provincial and linguistic lines. Metternich’s nationality policy helped to create the ideational and institutional foundations of modern nation-building across Central and Southeastern Europe. Its legacy outlasted the monarchy and is reflected in the distinctive culturalist tradition of nationhood in post-Habsburg Central Europe.

Introduction

Clemens Metternich is widely recognized as a leading actor in European affairs, from his appointment as Austrian foreign minister in 1809 and service as state chancellor from 1821 until his resignation in 1848. According to Henry Kissinger (1954, 1020), Metternich perceived himself metaphorically as a rock standing against the new forces of nationalism. In the conventional literature, he is depicted as a fierce counterrevolutionary and restorationist who sought to reverse Enlightenment reforms of state building, which he identified as a source of the novel phenomenon of nationalism. The famous biographer Srbik (1957, 85), for instance, claimed that “nation and state were alien concepts” to Metternich. Similarly, Seton-Watson (1977, 147) argued that “[t]he concept of nationality was, however, rejected by Metternich and his successors as a part of the body of liberal democratic doctrine.” Recently, Siemann (2019) pointed out that these traditional interpretations lack empirical substance. ¹ Although Metternich opposed political nationalism as a Western invention that was alien to Central Europe, he deemed the recognition of cultural nations key to empire.

It seems striking that in the first half of the 19th century, new institutions producing “national cultures” spread across the Habsburg Empire (Leerssen 2020, 4–5), enjoying government support, while in the same period, the Romanov Empire and the Ottoman Empire repressed such activities (Miller 2020, 355). “Empire,” as such, therefore cannot explain this variation in nationality policy. Moreover, despite Metternich’s restrictive antinationalist and antiliberal policies in the decades before 1848, it appears that by the mid-19th century, Austrian state elites had ideationally and institutionally recognized at least nine different nationalities. For instance, the draft constitution of 1849, similar to its liberal successor of 1867, promised equality between nationalities, with each holding the right to “cultivate its nationality and language” (Judson 2016, 195 and 293). These “national languages,” laboriously developed with the support of the Metternich regime, were subsequently used for the publication of the official Imperial Gazette, for schooling and administrative purposes (Stergar and Scheer 2018, 580–581). Although these applications of linguistically defined “nationality” have been extensively studied for the late 19th and the 20th century, the political origin has been neglected to date.

Metternich understood both the danger of nationalism for the old regime as well as the necessity for states to modernize. He therefore devised a “governance of empire” based on the premise that the promotion of multiple, culturally defined “nationalities” would prevent the emergence of political nationalism, which would in turn be associated with representative government and power politics. By supporting networks of conservative and nationally minded intellectuals, Metternich contributed to the rise of a novel culturalist conception of nationality that was consciously dissociated from political ideas of constitutionalism and representative government. In the post-Metternich era, this conception of nationality, which presented nations as a reflection of primordial culture, was subsequently applied both by nationalist activists (Judson and Zahra 2012; Judson 2006) and by the imperial state (Stergar and Scheer 2018; Göderle 2016). After the break-up of the Soviet Union, this culturalist conception of nationality was once again utilized by “nationalizing states” seeking legitimacy (Brubaker 1996).

In empire studies, Central and Southeast European nations are traditionally treated as entities existing independently of empires, either resisting subordination or being instrumentalized in the context of great power rivalry (Tilly 1997, 8; Miller 2020). From the conventional perspective, Metternich abandoned absolutist reforms due to resistance from quasi self-conscious nations demanding “their” rights. Komlosy (2015, 413), for instance, argues in this vein that Joseph II’s plan to introduce German as lingua franca of the central state met with resistance because it “failed to appreciate the importance of language as a means of identity and emancipation for non-German nationalities.” She concludes that the decrees of Joseph II “contributed to the desire of establishing the legal equality of languages among the non-German nationalities, which was achieved by the Austrian Constitution of 1867” (Komlosy, 413). This leap from Josephist policies of the 18th century to the liberal era of the 1860s figures prominently in conventional historiographies and omits the widespread indifference to nation and nationalism at the time of the Napoleonic wars (Langsam 1930, 182).

Offering an interpretation that avoids the assertion of quasi self-conscious nations, Judson (2016, 109) argues that, when the Metternich regime faced growing opposition from an alliance of bourgeoisie and noble elites, it “asserted its traditional authority even more aggressively” against an opposition that claimed traditional forms of autonomy in reference to “nation.” Business and educated elites supposedly allied with the traditional nobility, continuing to “use the eighteenth-century rhetoric that had asserted traditional legal forms of local or crown land autonomy – often couched as ‘nation’ – against the encroachment of a centralising imperial state” (Judson, 109). In contrast to these traditional interpretations of the relationship between Vienna and provincial nobility and bourgeoisie as adversarial and static – reflected in a real or rhetorical opposition between nations and the imperial state, center and periphery – I follow recent advances in “empire studies” that grasp these sets of relations as negotiated and dynamic (Kumar 2017).

Adopting a political modernist perspective (Malešević 2013; Breuilly 2001), this study treats “culture” as a dependent variable and considers the modernizing state, regime policies, and activities of intellectuals as independent variables. Instead of asserting a directional history of nation-state formation in opposition to empire, or “a developmentalist logic of the nation-state” (Fox, Van Ginderachter, and Brophy 2019, 250), it attends to critical junctures during which political choices determine future paths. Critical junctures are understood here as instances when certain historical circumstances, a sequence of events, and political decisions taken, can have “large and enduring consequences” (Pierson 2004, 44). Once established, institutions render certain options for action more probable than others. This helps to explain the contingency as well as the durability of nation-building projects.

Choosing “governance of empire” as a prism via which to study Metternich’s nationality policy helps to avoid the conventional oppositional framing of the “rulers” and “ruling elites” of the center versus the “subjected peoples,” “oppressed nations,” and “nondominant ethnic groups” of the periphery, which dominates not only traditional nationalist but also more recent postcolonial perspectives (Kumar 2017, 6). Empires are polities that pursue governmental strategies to incorporate “diverse peoples into the polity while sustaining or making distinctions among them” (Burbank and Cooper 2010, 2). Barkey (2008, 10), for instance, describes the political form of the Ottoman Empire as one of indirect rule, contrasting it to direct rule in national states: “Imperial state-periphery relationships are not direct relationships between state and individual subjects; rather, intermediate bodies, networks, and elites mediate the relationships.” Nation-building endeavors are potentially “a matter of a shared enterprise that could unite rulers and ruled as much as it divided them” (Kumar 2017, 6).

A key feature of empire is the government’s brokerage function, through which segmentation and integration become basic components of imperial rule. As Barkey (2008, 10) notes, “when the state has captured the brokerage functions between elites, it can use such structural advantage to separate, integrate, reward, and control groups.” Another key element of Metternich’s system of governance is that of federalism. Instead of viewing federalism as the outcome of a weak political center, Ziblatt (2004) shows that it can emerge from subunits with a high level of infrastructure. The following study will show how the Metternich regime combined the increase in “infrastructural power” (Mann 1993, 60) with federalization in order to secure brokerage functions, ultimately building a conservative alliance, pacifying province-based actors, and containing nationalism despite recurrent crises.

Metternich’s Conservative Empire Project

Metternich was a modernizer, particularly in economic matters (Siemann 2019, 745). At the same time, he was a counterrevolutionary who devised a conservative response to the upheavals of the French Revolution, where he observed nationalism and associated it with representative government and power politics. Democracy, according to Metternich, “separates men, creates rivalries of all kinds, and carries them forward very fast by competition among themselves” (quoted in Siemann, 714). He argued that, in the case of Central Europe, the traditional principle of monarchic rule “alone tends to bring men together, to unite them into compact and effective masses; to render them capable, by their combined efforts, of the highest degrees of culture and civilization” (quoted in Siemann, 714–715). Metternich developed a vision of empire whose governance was intended to preempt demands for popular representation by providing nonpolitical means of expression, such as forms of cultural autonomy.

Metternich’s Conservative Ideology

The foundation of Metternich’s political vision was anti-Jacobinism. Whereas enlightened state builders and Jacobines sought to achieve progress through radical reforms, his goal was to restore a harmonious order based on historically evolved institutions. “[I]n order to prevail,” Metternich explained in a critique of reformers, “a constitution must be the product of a people’s sense [Volkssinn] and not that of an excited, and therefore temporary, mind….What the liberal mind usually neglects…is the fact of difference….Everything in nature follows the path of development” (Metternich 1965, 71, my translation).

Metternich’s worldview had been influenced by the works of British conservative Edmund Burke and by the lectures of Christoph Koch at the University of Strasbourg. Koch saw the study of history as an instrument with which governments could explore causal relationships, especially in order to identify the principles that had led to the rise and fall of empires (Siemann 2019, 49). In Mainz, Niklas Vogt taught Metternich that the German imperial constitution was a federalist “mixed constitution,” securing a separation of powers: “Every community, every province, every country should be allowed to have its own laws and institutions as it sees fit, as long as they are not in obvious contradiction to the common good” (Vogt 1787, in Siemann, 62). The fundamental lesson was that it was fortunate for Europe that Germany was not united, this disunity standing in the way of hegemony. Federalism and “composite states” would be limited in power, thereby also restricting the latitude of demagogues (Siemann, 63).

Metternich was aware that in August 1792, his tutor Simon had been involved in the planning of the revolutionary events in Paris led by Jean-Paul Marat and Maximilien Robespierre (Siemann 2019, 76). By 1794, Metternich was convinced that the key actors in the revolution were bourgeois intellectuals, comprising teachers, students, lawyers, and journalists, none of whom were hampered by fears of material loss (Siemann, 591). The terror that followed the French Revolution reaffirmed him in his positive views of the Old Reich. Metternich’s experiences of his father’s policies during the latter’s service as governor in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), and where the young Metternich had assisted his father as secretary until the French occupation in 1794, inspired him to connect conservative political theory with political practice. His father’s restoration of the privileges of the estates and the granting of provincial autonomies had achieved what Metternich referred to as “the moral pacification of those provinces” (Metternich, quoted in Siemann, 103).

When Metternich began his political career in the imperial capital of Vienna, he hired two leading conservative ideologues, Friedrich Gentz and Friedrich Schlegel. The former became his secretary, and the latter was sent to Frankfurt with the task to write articles for newspapers in the German Confederation. Gentz worked on the intellectual underpinning of the “provincial estates constitutions,” which Metternich sought to promote by Article 13 of the German Federal Act in order to counter representative constitutionalism (Gentz, quoted in Ucakar 1985, 46, my translation):

Provincial estates constitutions are those in which members or representatives exercise the right to participate in the legislation of the state or in some of it, to coadvise, to agree, to present an alternative, or to exercise this right in other constitutionally legitimate forms through existing bodies.

Representative constitutions are, in contrast, those where the persons authorized to participate directly in legislation and the most important issues of administration not only represent the just and the interests of particular estates, or at least do not speak for these exclusively, but are called upon to represent the entire mass of the people.

In numerous articles, Schlegel argued for the revival of estates constitutions. After his public post expired, he contributed to conservative publications such as the Jahrbücher and the Beobachter (Kraus 1999, 44–45). Another prominent conservative was Andrian-Werburg, who “spoke for resurgent conservatism, one that recalled the estates in their resistance to Joseph’s [centralizing] state reforms in the 1780s” (Deak 2015, 51). He argued that provincial self-government, based on estates constitutions, was the only way to secure political order: “A rich and independent nobility…with political rights founded upon a constitution, will furnish the monarch, as well as the people, with a puissant principle of stability and thoughtful progress’ (quoted in Blum 1948, 33). Similarly, Metternich saw province-based political institutions as a pillar of conservative modernization.

From Radical “Model of Fusion” to Counterrevolutionary “Empire Project”

In the context of the 18th-century warfare between European states, the building of a military-fiscal state was the sine qua non of the Habsburg monarchy, which engaged in armed conflict in every decade from 1730 to 1820. Austrian state building had been guided by avant-garde Enlightenment reformers surrounding Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II. Their goal was to establish a system of direct rule between the state and its citizens through a uniform administration and the removal of provincial autonomies that rested on customary law (Reinalter 2011, 25). Leading reformers such as Joseph Sonnenfels meticulously studied what they perceived to be successful reforms in Britain, France, and Prussia, concluding that nation building was part of state building. In his essay “On the Love of the Fatherland,” written in 1771, Sonnenfels referred to the French model as an example of how to foster patriotism. Located as it is in the “opinion of the citizen,” he argues, patriotism is always related to identification with the territorial state and its comparison with other countries (Sonnenfels 1994[1771], 119). Similarly, Joseph II referred in his political reform draft of 1781 to the entire monarchy as the “fatherland,” in which the “national spirit” of the population was to be promoted (Drabek 2003, 155). Austria was widely perceived at the time to be an avant-garde modernizing state, praised publicly by leading Swiss and Prussian Enlightenment reformers (R. Palmer 2014, 78).

This perception changed fundamentally after the death of Joseph II in 1890, when so-called “Austrian Jacobins” became subject to persecution. Instead of increasing the polity’s capacity to finance warfare by intensifying state building, Emperor Francis and Metternich “would call upon tradition and monarchical legitimacy…upholding the traditional rights and privileges of the individual lands and kingdoms” (Deak 2015, 32). Metternich envisioned the monarchy’s reorganization into an empire based on three ideological pillars: first, Habsburg dynasticism, traditionally associated with Catholicism; second, federalism based on “estates constitutions”; and third, multiculturalism in reference to “nationalities.” The first ideological pillar was not significantly contested by any contemporary political stream. Metternich’s proposed reforms involved primarily the second and the third pillar. He developed his reform plans in some detail between 1813 and 1817.

In 1815, a reform commission that prepared the reintroduction of former estate constitutions in the regained provinces of Tyrol and Vorarlberg introduced its report with the following statement: “The Austrian monarchy must abandon the idea of total uniformity in the administration. The subjects of this vast empire are not one nation, one people …” (quoted in Radvany 1971, 36). On December 24, 1817, the semiofficial Wiener Zeitung published a government statement, explaining “when applying regulations, it is necessary to recognise the peculiar situations and conditions [of each province], and the resulting differences in their requirements.”

Metternich’s plans to reorganize the monarchy can be described as “principled con-federalism,” in which each province was to be ascribed one dominant “cultural nationality,” strong enough to tolerate the (co)existence of national minorities within it (Haas 1963, 118). In contrast to Enlightenment reformers, Metternich despised the idea of a state that supported standardized German as the official language, transcending geographical and social divisions (Siemann 2010, 57). Metternich warned the emperor that continuing the Josephist model would inevitably lead to the dangerous demand “for a central representative assembly” (quoted in Haas 1963, 128). In a written statement to the emperor on October 27, 1817, Metternich declared, “My premise is that the fusion system, in which the very first rule concerns the naming of the kingdoms and provinces, a necessary means at the beginning of the French Revolution when it was considered the most inevitable means to an end, must be removed” (quoted in Haas, 179). Essentially he argued that, unlike in the Josephist and French fusion model, the empire would gain the most strength from a governance system that established an inner balance, “resulting from equal treatment” within a “family of nations” (Haas, 148). Rather than centralization, considered by Metternich “the most absurd of all the tyrannies,” he proposed the empowerment of provincial political actors based on pre-Josephine privileges (quoted in Radvany 1971, 36). In his study, Siemann (2019, 749) concludes that “[Metternich] rejected the idea of the nationality of a state, but promoted nationalities within a state.”

The equal treatment of different nationalities was to be realized through equally ranked “national chancelleries” based in Vienna. Through this design, Metternich “sought to channel the idea of nationality into politically suitable reservoirs: regional nationality” (Haas 1963, 15). The empire, organized as a “composite state,” would achieve a balance among its constituent parts, with each region dominated by one nationality. Alongside the existing Hungarian and Transylvanian chancelleries, his plans included a Bohemian-Moravian-Galician chancellery for the north, an Austrian chancellery covering the German-speaking center, an Illyrian chancellery for the southeast, and an Italian chancellery covering the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia (Siemann 2019, 535).

Security concerns were a key factor in conserving the patchwork of German principalities and shaping policies with regard to the Italian states. Another crucial objective was to prevent the development of power-seeking national states that would undermine the Concert of Europe. With the Federal Act of June 8, 1815, Metternich had designed the German Confederation as a “federal defensive system” in the heart of Europe, thereby preserving the status quo (Siemann 2019, 543). He was aware that accepting new members would disturb the peaceful character of the Confederation and possibly incite competition for alliances. We therefore see that Metternich adopted a holistic, conservative perspective when designing the postwar order. He envisioned a Concert of Europe that would maintain peace between states, as well as a decentralized political structure to accommodate cultural differences.

Metternich’s Nationality Policy

Serving as state minister and state chancellor (from 1821), Metternich was also the chief advisor of Emperor Francis, who built a metaphorical wall around his minister that enabled him to concentrate political power. As long as Francis perceived Metternich as defender of the status quo, the latter “was largely able to operate autonomously” (Siemann 2019, 683). Engaging in both foreign and domestic policy, his chancellery had a section that was directly linked to the Ministry of Police (Okey 2001, 74). Metternich attempted to reconcile pressures for modernization – that is, continuing the expansion of state institutions and the market-driven economy, with counterrevolutionary policies through a governance of empire. In this context, Metternich’s approach to nation and nationality affected the reorganization of the monarchy, state ideology, and cultural institutions.

Political Reforms: Federalization and Devolution

The emperor ruled the Habsburg monarchy through a political structure that comprised Austria, represented by the Unified Imperial-Royal Court Chancellery, Hungary, and Transylvania – the latter two with separate Court Chancelleries in Vienna that communicated with provincial governments (Deak 2015, 44). Austria was divided into 12 large administrative units (Gubernien), which were subordinated directly to the central government. They were again divided into “historical regions” (Landschaften), to be administered and governed by provincial assemblies (Landtage), limiting the power of the imperial government (Siemann 1995, 72 and 78–79). These provincial diets recognized the nobility as a unit, which enabled their participation in the provincial government (Blum 1948, 28).

In the preceding era of Josephist state building, the provincial diets had been either neglected or only allowed to inspect laws and taxes submitted by the central government (Blum 1948, 24). Under Joseph II, “the power of the nobility had been…severely limited and its privileges threatened with extinction” (Blum, 29). In contrast, Metternich’s political program aimed at strengthening “the autonomy and self-government” of provinces (Siemann 2019, 520). In the case of Galicia, both its territorial concept and its constitution were 18th-century Habsburg inventions. Leopold II had granted an estates constitution in 1790 (Sutter 1980, 161–162), and Tyrol had received one in 1816. In the same year, a constitutional draft for Vorarlberg and Salzburg were also decreed, although the latter’s estates constitution was only published in 1827. Between 1825 and 1828, Vienna elevated the political status of the Hungarian diet, indicating a full “recovery” from the Josephist reforms (Blum 1948, 29). Although during most of the 18th century the diet had been disregarded, the emperor called for its convention in 1825 and granted the right to reject royal propositions (Blum, 39).

After the July Revolution of 1830, when the German states (except Austria, Prussia, Hesse-Homburg, and Oldenburg) introduced representative constitutions (Siemann 2010, 87), Metternich began to intensify policies of devolution and repress liberal-centralist actors. This was reflected symbolically in Ferdinand’s coronation ceremonies as king of Hungary in 1830, as king of Bohemia in 1835, and as king of Lombardy-Venetia in 1838 (Deak 2015, 37). Metternich “identified the anti-revolutionary interests of the great nobles with those of the throne” (Blum 1948, 29). As the role of the permanent council of the provincial assemblies changed, they increased their autonomy from the center. The noblemen who presided over these councils “viewed the members as their personal councillors, rather than the Emperor’s” (Blum, 32). A prominent political observer noted that anyone who had “the misfortune to contradict the president will be denounced by the latter to the Emperor as infected with the spirit of the revolution, with liberalism and Jacobinism” (quoted in Blum 1948, 32).

The two elements of indirect rule – the provincial diet and the patrimonial administration on the local level – “allowed for the smooth continuance of local customs and forms of public law,” which was precisely what Josephist reforms had sought to change (Deak 2015, 46-47). The provincial estates supported the conservative regime in its crackdown on proponents of liberal constitutionalism because the former based their claim for “constitutional rule” on “historical premises, namely the alleged status of free communities in early medieval times” (Mommsen 2011, 413). Rather than centralizing authority, they demanded the empowerment of the provincial estates in legislative and fiscal matters. Metternich’s so-called estates liberalism empowered provincial actors and reduced central authority (Taylor 1990, 55–60).

Although some evidence can be found in support of the “restoration of absolutism” and centralization thesis (Sked 2008, 107–122), the same seems true of federalization and devolution arguments (Haas 1963, 118–148; Siemann 2010, 60–107). The puzzle can be resolved by focusing on the regime’s governance. Federalism is the result of a process in which “the powers of the central government are devolved upon the subordinate bodies in such a way that both central and regional units are thenceforth endowed with certain powers and functions of which neither can be deprived by the other” (Livingston 1952, 81). Although for the purposes of stability a federative arrangement usually requires a form of constitution laying out the competencies and functions of central and regional governments, the conservative regime rejected such a solution. If one takes as a given, as Metternich did, the cultural qualities of human populations inhabiting provinces, federal government can be interpreted as a device by which “[e]very society…is more or less closely integrated in accordance with its own peculiar historical, cultural, economic, political and other determinants” (Livingston, 84).

The assessment of changes in political structure appears ambiguous due to two seemingly contradictory processes: The bureaucratic state apparatus continued to expand, as, consequently, did imperial rule. At the same time, Metternich abandoned the Josephist state project in the unitary-centralist tradition and pursued a policy of devolution, empowering the provincial diets as collaborative actors. His somewhat centralist reform proposal of 1811 constituted a response to the state’s existential crisis after military defeat, territorial losses, and bankruptcy. He sought to foster urgently needed political authority, anticipating war between France and Russia (Sked 2008, 107–108).

Metternich’s reform plans after 1815 must, in contrast, be considered in the context of peace and reconstruction. In 1817, he proposed the federative reorganization of the monarchy, which was only partially implemented due to the emperor’s rejection of far-reaching principled reforms (Siemann 2010, 56).

Cultural Institutions and Networks of Intellectuals

After 1815, the imperial government supported the foundation of cultural institutions entirely rooted in the provinces. The Bohemian National Museum in Prague was founded in 1818, following the example of the museum of Moravia and Silesia “for the promotion of national education” that was established in Brno (Brünn) in 1817 (Raffler 2007, 128). Similarly, the government granted permission for a Polish national institute (Ossolineum), which was opened in Lviv in 1826. Further examples were the Széchényi National Library, the Hungarian National Museum, and the National Theatre in Pest. The first Slavic Matice had also been founded previously in Pest, as was the Matica Srpska in 1826, one year after the establishment of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. This institution was emulated and a Czech (1831), Illyrian (1842), and Sorbian Matica (1845) were established (Leerssen 2020, 4–5). As Baar (2010, 81) notes in regard to the Czech Matice, “[i]t subsidized and published seminal works of the Czech national revival….It occupied an authoritative position on theoretical issues relating to the Czech language and in regard to the production of schoolbooks in Czech.” Provincial museums were further founded in Styria (1811), Friuli (1817), Carniola (1821), Tyrol (1823), Upper Austria (1833), Salzburg (1834), and in Carinthia (1844) (Raffler 2007, 127–128). Whereas these province-based associations enjoyed government support, similar projects on the state level – such as the foundation of an Austrian national museum in Vienna – were thwarted (Bruckmüller and Stekl 1995, 187–188).

These newly established institutions were directly linked to the regime’s conservative alliance. The case of the Bohemian National Museum illustrates that the founders enjoyed the support of Vienna, the nobility, and the clergy (Krueger 2009, 173):

The founding committee kept in relatively close contact with the Viennese authorities, and made sure to keep Chancellor Metternich abreast of their plans.…In a letter to Metternich in the spring of 1818, the committee wrote that it had enough money and material to ensure the “imminent execution of this institute.” The committee constantly framed the museum project in terms of the good that the museum would accomplish for the state.…The successful establishment of the museum would support “not only purely scientific purposes,” but more importantly further “the stated goal of the wise Austrian government, namely the general intellectual tendency of the nations to guide education and use the fruits of peace….”

The museum committee sought to gain government support by arguing that the museum’s cultural activities would preoccupy men and prevent them from engaging in oppositional political activities (Krueger, 174). These institutional hubs contributed to a new learned affinity between the gentry and nonaristocratic intellectuals (Krueger, 125). In April 1818, the aristocrat Friedrich Berchtold and the intellectual Joseph Jungmann submitted their plan for the establishment of the Bohemian National Museum, which “was part of a process whereby a cohesive and apparently seamless history and cultural past was grafted onto political territory” (Krueger, 176).

The success of these institutions was related to earlier Josephist reforms that had dissolved numerous monasteries, which had held libraries, collections, and stocks reaching back to the Middle Ages. Affluent aristocrats were able to procure these, and in many cases, they donated them to newly established institutes. On May 22, 1818 the Prager Zeitung reported in detail which collections had been donated to the Bohemian museum by prominent aristocrats such as Franz Kolowrat and August Lobkowitz. As Krueger (2009, 184–185) notes, “(c)ensorship and money remained a problem for those outside such official institutions, but within them various obstacles could be avoided….Czech publications…were provided with the smoke screen sanction of the museum as an officially accepted institution run by aristocrats who were often friends or acquaintances of Chancellor Metternich….Metternich had given money to the museum, after all, and in its form and original public intent, it resembled other provincial institutions.”

The museum’s sponsoring of a newly created topographical map of Bohemia in the 1820s illustrates the desire to present Bohemian geography and inhabitants as belonging to a supposedly “natural” whole. On the cultural function of newly founded “national museums,” Surman (2012, 37) notes the important effect of endeavors to create standardized written languages in other fields of research, including topographical, historiographical, and ethnographical studies: “Pioneering works on terminology were thus not only lexical studies, but also descriptive-explorative enterprises involving the dense description of chosen regions, such as the (still bilingual) Czech-Latin Czech Flora (1819).” In 1823, the intellectual Josef Dobrovský proposed to the museum that he work on a new volume of Scriptores Rerum Bohemicarum in Czech, collecting ancient legal rights associated with Bohemia (Krueger 2009, 184).

The manifold functions of intellectuals are perhaps best illustrated by the example of František Palacký. He was appointed historiographer of the Bohemian estates and enjoyed leading positions in the Bohemian Museum, the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences, and the Czech Matice (Baar 2010, 32). He was also chair of a committee that organized the collection of funds to construct the National Theatre in Prague, which was eventually built in 1868. Given the regime’s ideological stance, it is not surprising that Palacký was among the first scholars elected to the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Similarly, Hungarian nationalist intellectual Mihály Horváth was elected to the Hungarian Academy in 1841 (Baar, 82–83).

With regard to his Italian policy, Metternich advised his emperor to support cultural institutions such as the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, and to reorganize the Imperial and Royal Institute of Sciences and the Literary Institute, referring to the latter as “this national institution” (Siemann 2019, 522). The Austrian government supported the publication of scientific journals intended to promote Italian as a newly standardized literary language and to enhance the economic modernization of the respective provinces (Gernert 1993, 70). Metternich supported the foundation of the Biblioteca Italiana in 1816, an Italian-speaking newspaper that became a platform for opposition figures (Rumpler 1997, 165). And already in November 1815, the Austrian governor in Milan had “proclaimed the foundation of a new official Milanese newspaper, the Gazzetta di Milano,” which was subscribed to by public institutions (Boaglio 2003, 209).

In Galicia, Metternich supported both Polish and Ruthenian cultural activities. When Emperor Leopold granted Galicia an estates constitution, the respective delegation had been led by the aristocrat Jozef Tenczin-Ossolińsky. After consulting with the censorship office in Vienna, in 1792, Ossolińsky was granted permission to publish the Daily of Polish Patriots (Dziennik Patriotycznych Polaków) as the first Polish national newspaper in Lviv. In 1809, Metternich appointed him to a leading position in the Royal Library. One year earlier, Bartholomäus Kopitar had published a grammar of the Slovene language. Ossolińsky recruited him for his library in Vienna, where he was to complete a Polish grammar (“dictionary of the Polish language”), which he accomplished in 1814 (Rumpler 1997, 158). Vienna was also the place where the “monuments of patriotic history” were collected, before the Austrian government approved the foundation of a Polish national institute (Ossolineum) in Lviv in 1817. Throughout the 1820s, “Vienna ‘courted’ Galician Poles through a number of pro-Polish gestures” (Vushko 2015, 111). In 1826, the government created a chair for Polish language and literature at Lviv. In the following year, Governor Lobkowitz made financial contributions to the establishment of the Ossoliński Library, which became a major center of Polish cultural activities. It also facilitated Ruthenian (Ukrainian) literary activities until the Austrian police closed its reading room and imprisoned its director in 1835 due to revolutionary publications (Kozik 1986, 33).

After the transfer of the Ukraine-Uniate Faculty of Theology from the University of Vienna to Lviv in 1808, Metternich supported “Ukrainian” cultural activities in order to root the faculty regionally, thereby linking Ruthenian nationality to Catholicism (Siemann 2010, 107). In 1818, the rector of the University of Lviv gave a speech in which he addressed the governor and spoke explicitly of a “Ruthenian university” (Remer 1993, 279). In the following year, the first chair of Ruthenian language and literature was founded at the university, and Ruthenian (Ukrainian) became the official language of instruction at the Faculty of Theology. In 1834, Joseph Lewyckyj published the first draft of a standardized Ruthenian grammar. Besides promoting a Catholic Ruthenian nationality, Metternich supported Southern Slavic national projects, such as the building of a Catholic Illyrian nation (Siemann 2019, 536). The Viennese government promoted activities that sought the creation of Catholic-Slavic nationalities, as implicitly opposed to Orthodox-Slavic national projects that gravitated around Russia.

Societal Integration and Segmentation through Language Policy

The Metternich era coincided with technological advances in printing and the emergence of what Anderson (1991) termed “print capitalism.” With the introduction of steam-operated presses as of 1813, the number of possible prints per minute increased from around eight to 40 (Leerssen 2020, 1). In Habsburg Central Europe, the emergence of print capitalism was accompanied by the standardization of written vernaculars. Although several languages were recognized on the local level, Josephist state builders had promoted primarily German, as a replacement of Latin, to facilitate “communicative transparency between center and periphery” (Haslinger 2008, 83).

Metternich’s nationality policy supported the development of multiple province-based vernacular presses, as well as multilingual practices in the field of administration and education. Generally, the “interactions between the regional and the central institutions would take place in German, whereas interaction between a regional institution and a citizen could be in local languages” (Rindler Schjerve and Vetter 2007, 59). Although the German language remained that of the imperial administration as introduced by Enlightenment reformers, its envisioned usage as the common language of the public domain was abandoned. Instead, the bureaucratic state sought to regulate the use of multiple literary languages. For the production of and training in newly standardized literary languages, Metternich and the emperor supported the foundation of university chairs – such as one in Slavonic Languages in Ljubljana, one for the Czech language in Prague and Moravia, and one for Polish in Lviv (Siemann 2019, 526).

Although Metternich supported the institutionalization of Magyar as the official language in the Hungarian provinces, it would take until 1840 for the Hungarian Diet to replace Latin with Magyar. Given that two-thirds of the population in the Hungarian provinces were non-Magyar speakers, its decrees were to be translated into regional vernaculars (Sutter 1980, 162). In the province of Lombardy-Venetia, Metternich considered it a prerequisite that all civil servants, including those sent from Vienna, be able to communicate in Italian (Siemann 2019, 523). He ascribed to the inhabitants a linguistically defined Italian nationality while ignoring other groups such as Friulian speakers. Accordingly, the government employed a particular variant of Italian as the language of administration and education (Boaglio 2003, 205–207). Even in the linguistically most diverse harbor city of Trieste, which enjoyed a significant degree of autonomy as part of the South-Slavic provinces, Italian was the dominant language of administration. In 1820, there was still a total absence of documents in Slovene (Rindler Schjerve and Vetter 2007, 63).

In Bohemia, the production of a Slavic literary language saw major results in the 1830s, such as the first natural-science textbooks published in Czech. Václav Kramerius founded the first private Czech-language newspaper, which published counterrevolutionary propaganda in cooperation with the government (Hroch 1993, 232). The antiliberal position of Bohemian-Czech nationalists secured regime support and, most importantly, the establishment of the chair of Czech language and literature at the University of Prague. A small group of Bohemian-Czech intellectuals further convinced the government to grant the right to teach the Czech language as a facultative subject in secondary schools, creating teaching positions for their graduates. In the 1830s, the government expanded Czech language classes in secondary schools and permitted the publication of two Czech weeklies and a number of scientific journals. A Catholic foundation was also established that funded the publication of books in Czech for common readers (Hroch, 234). This was linked to the organization of the Church as the Landeskirche, which overlapped with Bohemia’s political territory. The theological seminars constituted a socially open and provincially rooted path to higher education because they promoted the Czech language for pastoral reasons.

In Galicia, Enlightenment reforms had contributed to the growing significance of German in public affairs, alongside the traditionally important Polish (Fellerer 2003, 141). After 1815, despite the neglect of Ruthenian in public administration due to the absence of a standardized Ruthenian literary language, Austrian policy supported its cultivation: “The Austrian legislature and its executives launched initiatives which aimed at improving the education of the Greek Catholic clergy” (Fellerer, 142). In 1818, the emperor enacted a law that stipulated the use of Ruthenian at Greek Catholic elementary schools. The introduction of Ruthenian for teaching purposes enabled the Greek Catholic clergy to educate Ruthenian-speaking intellectuals, who would become the backbone of the Ruthenian cultural movement (Fellerer, 143). Another example of a newly institutionalized national language was the Illyrian case, in which the provincial autonomy of Croatia and Slavonia enabled the Diet to introduce a newly standardized “Illyrian” language in schools, “based on the Štokavia” (Stergar 2016, 115). Although Metternich supported the cultivation of many purportedly “national” languages, he did not recognize Yiddish or Hebrew speakers as holding “Jewish” nationality (Rumpler 1997, 160–161).

Government Support for Vernacular Presses and National Intellectuals

One indicator of this government policy was the rising number of journals and newspapers published in Vienna in languages other than German, including Greek, Serbian, Croatian, Magyar, and Czech. The Croatian language was cultivated as a modern literary language in Vienna, where Antun Mihanović, who was studying law there at the university, wrote a piece in 1815 articulating a linguistically defined concept of Illyrian (Croatian) nationality. He also composed the famous song “Our Beautiful Fatherland” and attempted to establish the Croatian newspaper Oglasnik ilierski in 1818 (Winter 1969, 97). The Illyrian/Croatian national intellectual Ljudevit Gaj, who came to Vienna in 1828, founded the Croatian-speaking cultural associations Illirske noviny and the Illirski klub (Rumpler 1997, 175). From 1835 onward, Gaj published the newspaper Croatian Gazette (later called Illyrian National Gazette) in Croatian in Zagreb. Vienna had been similarly important for the cultivation of a “Serbian” literary language. Dimitrije Davidović, for instance, had founded the Novine serpske iz carstvujuscega as the first Serbian newspaper in Vienna in 1813 (Rumpler, 154–215).

In the Romanian case, a number of writers engaged in the development of a national literary culture, which they linked to the idea of an ancient Daco-Romanian nation. This movement gained ground in Transylvania, especially in its urban center of Sibiu (Hermannstadt/Nagyszeben), which was inhabited by a significant German-speaking bourgeoisie. After attempts to establish a newspaper in the Romanian language failed due to limited demand, one of the first Romanian-language newspapers was eventually founded in Vienna. Between 1803 and 1816, a group of writers developed similar projects in Bukovina. One received official permission from the Austrian authorities to be published under the title Chrestomaticul romanescu (Prokopowitsch 1965, 12–15). Lajos Kossuth’s agitation for a Hungarian-Magyar state-nation project that included Transylvania stimulated intellectuals to develop a Romanian counterproject. Metternich’s policies led to a reinterpretation of Austria as an empire that protects “the Romanian people” (Prokopowitsch, 18).

When the Hungarian nationalist Kossuth was released from prison under an amnesty in 1840 and became editor of the Magyar newspaper Pesti Hirlap, he asked Metternich for financial support. Metternich offered him only moderate payments for articles propagating a conservative position, with the result that Kossuth became even more passionately nationalist, soon turning the Pesti Hirlap “into a powerful organ by the brilliance of his invective against everything emanating from Vienna” (A. Palmer 1972, 285). Metternich attempted to counter Kossuth’s agitation by supporting “moderate” nationalists such as Széchenyi and by organizing an Austro-Hungarian committee of supposedly reliable, conservative magnates. A similar case was that of the Hungarian newspaper Tudományos Gyüjtemény (Scientific Collection), which received its license to be published in Pest from 1817 to 1841, despite warnings by the Viennese police in 1820. Vienna also supported Ljudevit Gaj’s nationalist newspaper Danica Ilirska, founded in 1834–1835, which was only shut down by the authorities in 1843, when the national project of “Greater Serbia” in association with the famous Načertanije led to concrete forms of a “Slavic politics” (Rumpler 2006, 7–8).

Nationality in Textbooks, Statistics, and Bureaucratic Classifications

After 1815, when state functions shifted from the demands of dynastic warfare to those of governing an emergent mass society, state authorities turned to province-based institutions in questions of language of instruction, textbooks, and demographic categorization. A new strand of textbooks came into being that employed nationality, presenting nations as measurable groups. An example is a textbook published in 1839 titled Physical and Political Geography by Johann Sommer. When discussing Austria’s population, the author refers to census data from 1830 and identifies four “main peoples” from a total population of 33.4 million. The “Germans” accounted for 6.2 million, and the “Slavs” – which he differentiates into “Czechs,” “Hanaks,” “Slovaks,” “Poles,” “Rusniaks,” “Slovenes,” “Croates,” “Slavonians,” “Serbs,” and “Morlaks” – accounted for 15.65 million. In Sommer’s calculation, the “Hungarians or Magyars” constituted 4.5 million, and the “Italians” 4.65 million (Sommer 1839, 5–6). This presentation deprived nationality of the voluntaristic character that was key to the Josephist conceptualization of nationhood – as the aggregated result of identification with the state on the part of individuals. In 1846, the Directorate of Administrative Statistics, under its new director Carl Czoernig, turned “nationality” into a key category of the census. Czoernig and his colleagues had recourse to the works of the Bohemian-Czech intellectual Pavel Jozef Šafárik, expanding his research to all projected “national languages” within the empire (Göderle 2016, 198).

Metternich’s policy of promoting “cultural nationalities” and associated bourgeois segments was complemented by the prevention of “Austrian” cultural institutions. An example is the comparatively late foundation of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1847. Metternich defined its “scientific” function as being clearly separate from any political or cultural mission, in striking contrast to the function attributed to institutions in the provinces (Rumpler 2010, 1127). Moreover, the regime supported the transformation of “regional clubs” into province-based “national associations” (Siemann 1995, 226–228). Joseph Hammer-Purgstall, a prominent scholar in Oriental Studies, became the first president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences after many (quasi-)academies had been established in the provinces, including the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences. Palacký became the latter’s scientific secretary in 1841, having been appointed “Bohemian provincial historiographer” by the estates in 1831. Supported by Šafárik, he managed to position Prague as the emerging center of scientific “Slavism” (Winter 1969, 251–252). Although the government established a chair of Czech studies at the University of Vienna, it rejected demands for an Austrian-German counterpart. Until 1849, no university chair of German literature existed in Austria (Heindl 2013, 212). Whereas Hammer-Purgstall’s “Oriental Studies” were officially promoted, Sonnenfels’s Austrian-German literary studies course was suspended, and the government rejected Hammer-Purgstall’s proposal to develop an official Austrian-German dictionary, supporting a Czech language project instead.

Regulations concerning language in public administration and the establishment of commercial associations changed the incentive structure for linguistic assimilation and supported the segmentation of the growing bourgeoisie. When the Viennese entrepreneur Heinrich Hopf followed English and French examples in 1816, attempting to establish an “association for the promotion of national [vaterländisch] commerce,” he was prohibited from doing so by the Royal Commission of Commerce. In contrast, strictly province-based organizations such as the “association for the promotion of industry in Bohemia,” which was founded in 1834 with the goal of advancing the Czech-speaking bourgeoisie, enjoyed government support (Hroch 1993, 234). Another example is the Inner-Austrian Commercial Club (1839), which was initially founded as the supraregional Austrian Commercial Club in 1837, expanding its branches across the monarchy. It was banned before restricting itself to the German-speaking core provinces (Drobesch 2006, 1034–1035).

This section has shown how Metternich’s approach to nation and nationality affected political structure, state ideology, and cultural institutions across the monarchy. His policies contributed to the formation of a conservative alliance, in which the political center adopted a brokerage function in relation to province-based actors. Furthermore, they established a culturalist concept of “nationality” that enjoyed institutional recognition. In the following, I will examine how far his nationality policy succeeded in containing revolution and political national movements in times of crisis.

Government Responses to Crises Involving Nationality

In the aftermath of two waves of nationalist campaigning in 1820 and 1830, Metternich adopted a cooperative strategy and granted amnesty to a number of nationalists on the condition that they retreat from “political” activities and engage in “cultural” ones. That Metternich rejected “political” forms of nationalism is illustrated by his admission of Jewish migrants who feared persecution, while rejecting or detaining Greek revolutionaries such as Alexander Ypsilanti, whom he imprisoned (Sked 2008, 128). Similarly, Metternich considered German nationalist student fraternities a threat, but he supported prominent “German-national” intellectuals – provided the latter approach nationality as a cultural issue (Sked, 129).

Although imperial reforms in Lombardy-Venetia alienated some provincial elites, this had only little immediate effect on popular sentiments (Rumpler 1997, 164). When an oppositional nationalist camp developed among Italian-speaking intellectuals in 1819, Metternich adopted his typical strategy of responding first with harsh police measures, to be followed in a second step by granting amnesties and offering cooperation. In 1820, a wave of arrests resulted in the imprisonment of many nationalist intellectuals, 19 of whom faced death penalties for treason, and 40 were sent to a high-security prison in Styria. Many of them were released, and the last were granted amnesty between 1830 and 1832 (Rumpler, 167).

The limited popular appeal of political nationalism is illustrated by the events that took place in the wake of the French July Revolution in 1830 and the upheavals of 1846. In 1830, a wave of antinobility protests took place in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe, followed, a year later, by attacks on the nobility in Upper Hungary – today’s Slovakia (Sperber 2005, 43). These conflicts lacked any significant articulation as reflecting national antagonisms. It is worth noting that the Austrian government refrained from using socioeconomic conflicts between peasants and noble landowners to expand the state’s leverage by playing the “peasant card.”

In the Polish case, Metternich’s response was characterized by cooperative practices and an affirmative nationality policy. The Polish insurrection of 1830 demonstrated that the Ossolineum had become a center of nationalist activities, evident in its 49 secret publications, including Mickiewicz’s Books of the Polish People and the Polish Pilgrimage. Metternich decided to close down the institute’s library and printing press (Rumpler 1997, 160). By January 1831, the differences of opinion between Metternich and Governor Lobkowitz had become irreconcilable. Whereas Metternich feared that an independent Polish state could make territorial demands on Galicia, Lobkowitz argued that an independent Poland could increase Austrian security as a buffer against Russia (Vushko 2015, 118). After the insurrection in Russia’s Congress Poland in 1830–1831, the Tsar realized that his support for Polish cultural and political rights on the basis of its “historical constitution” had failed to prevent the development of a Polish political movement. Prussia and Russia agreed to offer the Republic of Cracow to Austria, hoping that this move would help to solve their own “Polish problem” (Rumpler 1997, 161). In response to the renewed alliance of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, various oppositional movements such as the Young Poland and the Union of the Polish People gained popularity, illustrating the interaction between nationalism and international politics. In 1831, Kossuth declared that “the Polish cause is the cause of the whole of Europe” (Rumpler, 160).

Vienna’s response reflected its idiosyncratic governance of empire. After Metternich had ordered the detention of leading Polish nationalist agitators such as Franciszek Smolka and Florian Ziemalkowski, both of whom were facing the death penalty for treason, he eventually offered cooperation. Both were granted amnesty and rose to the highest ranks in Austrian politics (Rumpler, 160). ² One indicator of the success of Metternich’s policies was the internal class conflict in Galicia, where rebellious Ruthenian peasants confronted the Polish noble estate, the Szlachta (Taylor 1990, 60–61). On the other hand, Austrian nationality policy in Galicia had not only created a Ukrainian intelligentsia but had further paved the way for loyalty to Austrian rule and depictions of Ukrainians as “Tyroleans of the East” (quoted in Kozik 1986, 27).

In the context of the 1846 uprising, Galician Ruthenian-speaking peasants joined the counterrevolutionary side led by Metternich and massacred hundreds of nobles and estate stewards, whom they described as “Poles” (Sperber 2005, 143). In 1848, Polish nationalists attempted to stage another uprising but again faced fierce resistance from the peasants. The nationalists complained that Austrian government officials supported the establishment of a “Ruthenian Council” in Lviv and had promoted the idea that the Eastern part of Galicia was inhabited by Ruthenians. Polish nationalists supposedly asked how many nationalities they had left to invent. While agitating for their own Polish national project, they sought to deconstruct Ruthenian nationality through an instrumentalist lens, complaining that “Russian Austrians, alias Ruthenians” were “invented in the laboratory of Count Stadion” (quoted in Sperber, 143). Metternich attributed the 1846 uprising in Galicia to the administration’s inability to control its extensive territory and, in line with his principled nationality policy, recommended that Galicia be split into a Polish-dominated and a Ruthenian-dominated province. However, its governor, Franz Stadion, advised him to keep Galicia as a single province. Stadion argued that by keeping “Ruthenians” and “Poles” within one province they “could balance each other’s separatist proclivities” (Vushko 2015, 226–227). These contrasting views show that whereas Stadion opposed the idea of linking “nations” to political and territorial provinces, Metternich sought to accommodate “nations” by granting provincial autonomy.

Metternich’s response to the Hungarian crisis in the 1840s shared the key traits of his Italian and Polish policies. Although some moderate Hungarian nationalists such as István Széchenyi cooperated closely with Vienna, Metternich’s support of cultural and economic development failed to absorb the rising discontent among the Hungarian gentry and bourgeoisie. Metternich had supported the empowerment of the Hungarian estates, which gave the Hungarian-Magyar national movement an institutional point of reference (Rumpler 1997, 172). The short-term success of this policy was linked to its ability to meet the landed interests of the Hungarian magnates in their opposition to the liberal bourgeoisie and the peasantry. Vienna continued to support the development of a “Hungarian-Magyar” national culture. In 1837, a Hungarian national theater was established in Pest. In 1844, the Hungarian National Opera was opened, staging works with nationalist content such as the Hymnus, which eventually became Hungary’s national anthem, and the Bank Ban, which would become Hungary’s classic national opera, about the execution of a tyrannical foreign queen (Rumpler 1997, 173).

Despite recurrent efforts toward brokerage, Metternich failed to arrange a compromise between Vienna’s claim to control and the growing demands of provincial actors. The conservative Hungarian “reform party” dissolved and split into two camps. Although some magnates and moderate nationalists remained within Metternich’s conservative alliance, an anti-Austrian political movement emerged under the leadership of Kossuth, who was influenced by Mazzini’s Risorgimento movement and was joined by noblemen such as Ferenc Deák. Kossuth’s “Young Hungary” used the newspaper Pesti Hirlap for agitation, spreading the movement’s program that articulated demands for a representative parliament and a pro-Magyar electoral system. In 1842, Kossuth won over the “moderate” reform party and the majority of the Hungarian Diet (Rumpler 1997, 175).

After 1835, increasing government paralysis, partly on account of the mentally unfit new emperor and the anachronistic government system, reduced Vienna’s capacity for brokerage in light of empowered provincial actors. Metternich’s nationality policy began to develop a political life of its own even within the Austrian Conference of State, in which the Bohemian aristocrat Kolowrat championed Palacký and Gaj, and Archduke John showed sympathy for Illyrianism (A. Palmer 1972, 287). Metternich’s distinction between cultural nationality and political nationalism became increasingly difficult to maintain: “He distrusted Magyar nationalism as exemplified by Kossuth and he also regarded three of the Slav movements as dangerous, ‘Polonism,’ ‘Czechism’ and ‘Illyrianism,’ which he had earlier patronized.…Yet, while frowning on these three ‘advanced’ forms of Slav national-consciousness, Metternich was still ready to encourage in 1843 the specifically Croatian national revival (even under Gaj) and he also found much to commend in the virtues of the Slovaks, among whom national sentiment was yet hardly vocal” (A. Palmer, 287).

Despite these ambiguities, Metternich’s policies helped to overcome several crises and succeeded in rendering “[o]ppositional political activity in or out of the Estates…virtually nonexistent in the decades after the Napoleonic Wars” (Krueger 2009, 192). Regime responses to crises were generally moderate and rarely depended on the army due to the absence of popular mobilizations (Rumpler 1997, 200–202). Even when the integrity of the monarchy was challenged in the wake of the 1848 revolution, Metternich’s governance fulfilled its function by setting the regime’s Illyrian-Croatian and Bohemian-Slavic allies against Austrian liberals and Hungarian separatists. Both the so-called liberal revolution of 1848 and the Hungarian war of independence ultimately failed. Despite a growing momentum for liberal reformers, the post-Metternich era remained dominated by a regime that continued modernization policies within the framework of Metternich’s empire project, including its featured “cultural nationalities.”

Conclusion

This article has shown how, in an era of modernization shaped by print capitalism, bureaucratic state making, and a growing bourgeoisie, Metternich’s policies helped to create the ideational and institutional foundations of cultural nation-building projects across Habsburg Central Europe. Metternich’s policy of reviving “estates constitutions” had the effect of bringing together aristocrats, the clergy, and eventually certain bourgeois segments as representatives of political and territorial provinces. The estates were the carriers of newly founded national museums, and they supported literary and scholarly activities, including the production of topographies, historical research, and ethnolinguistics, which in turn fostered the cultural substrate of supposedly preexisting nationalities. Organizational forms that were emulated across Central Europe included museums as well as scholarly and commercial associations, all of which interacted with the demands of the imperial state. The Metternich regime promoted cultural institutions that were banned in the Russian and Ottoman empires for the first generation of nation builders – for instance, the Maticas.

Politically, Metternich’s governance of empire addressed two major regime challenges related to nationalism. First, in terms of social structure, it facilitated the development of provincially and linguistically demarcated bourgeois segments. Although the expansion of the bourgeoisie was a consequence of economic modernization, government policy shaped its linguistic, political, and territorial segmentation. Second, in terms of political collective identity and actorness, it prevented any organization and/or representation on the central state level, containing nationality as a cultural category and preventing any major spillover into oppositional politics. Although nationality was indeed utilized by the regime’s governance of empire, provincial actors adopted the ascending concept of “cultural nationality” as a vehicle for emancipation of “their” province or kingdom.

In the post-Metternich era, there was a consensus among the delegates drafting the 1849 constitution, including liberals and peasant delegates, that “nationality” was not a “political” but a “cultural” category that would legitimize claims to representation (Taylor 1990, 87). Further examples of this legacy include the publication of the Imperial Gazette in multiple “national languages” and classificatory state practices, such as the imperial census, that employed a Metternichian culturalist conception of nationality. Last but not least, this conception of nationality underpinned Article 19 of the 1867 Fundamental State Law, which declared equal cultural rights for all recognized “nationalities” successfully promoted since the Metternich era.