Migrants have become a focus for research, while the people who enabled their movement have received not the same attention. By analysing a family network of migration agents spread-out in various parts of the Habsburg Empire, this paper brings together the micro and macro perspectives of overseas migration from and via Central Europe. The paper investigates the years preceding the First World War when emigration from Austria-Hungary and those involved became the object of scandal. The imperial War Ministry and several newspapers attacked a newcomer to the transatlantic migration business, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and several hundred migration agents for illegally enhancing the emigration of Austro-Hungarian men who had not yet fulfilled their military service. This paper sketches out the different layers of an entangled history. These entanglements included divergent interests and corruption among ministries in Austria-Hungary, political animosities in the Habsburg province of Galicia, competing international steamship trusts, settlement policies for Canada’s sparsely populated territories, and diplomatic and public resentment in the British Empire over the alleged unfair treatment of a Canadian company abroad.

Die Auswanderungsaffäre von 1913/14, oder: Kapeller im Kriminal. In: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 71/1 (2023), 83–111. [The Emigration Affair of 1913/14, or: Kapeller Behind Bars]

Published in a special issue in honour of Andreas Kappeler’s 80th birthday: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 71/1 (2023).

In honour of Andreas Kappeler’s 80th birthday, Ulrich Hofmeister and I edited a Festschrift special issue in the reputable Jahrbücher für Osteuropäische Geschichte. All contribution discussed aspects of entangled history in Eastern Europe.

Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 71/1 (2023).

This paper discusses the circumstances surrounding the creation of a ministry for the Russian minority in revolutionary Ukraine, as well as the legislative process governing the protection of minorities in general.

Open access: “Vom Staatsvolk zur nationalen Minderheit. Das Ministerium für Großrussische Angelegenheiten in der Ukraine, 1917–1918,“ Nordost-Archiv 31, 2022, 28–42. = Revised German version of my article in Ukraïna Moderna 29, 2020.

Abstract:

This article is devoted to the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs, which existed under various names in revolutionary Ukraine from the fall of 1917 to the summer of 1918. To this day, scholars have paid little attention to this institution, deeming it unproductive and hence on the margins of the Ukrainian Revolution. The Jewish and Polish ministries, which represented the two other large non-Ukrainian populations, were significantly more active. However, documents held in the Central State Historical Archive in Kyiv reveal that the activity of the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs was not all insignificant.

Together with colleagues from the COST Action “European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network ” (ENTAN), we published the world’s first textbook on non-territorial autonomy as concept of national minority protection.

My own contribution tackles the history of this model since the 19th century.

For open access click here.

My article „Objectivising national identity:The introduction of national registers in the late Habsburg Empire“, published in Nations and Nationalism, tackles national identities and classifications when they became legal and political categories in the late Habsburg Empire.

Börries Kuzmany, “Objectivising national identity: The introduction of national registers in the late Habsburg Empire“, Nations and Nationalism 2023. Open Access Link.

My NTAutonomy ERC project is slowly coming to an end. We therefore invited the world’s leading specialists on the history of non-territorial autonomy for a concluding conference „The Theory and Practice of Non-Territorial Autonomy in Europe: A Historical Perspective”, , 15-17 September 2022.

Conference programme

Conference report on H-Soz-Kult

Interview on the development of the idea of non-territorial autonomy,  its applications in the past, and its potential for the present.

Journal of the University of Vienna Rudolphina

Together with colleagues from Estonia and Hungary, I organised and tought the workshop “Ethnic Categorization as a Precondition for NTA – Pitfalls in Past & Present“ at the training school of the ENTAN COST-Action.