The workshop set out to explore different aspects of diversity – religious, linguistic, and national diversity – in European history. Participants came to the workshop from a broad range of academic disciplines and covered different time frames and regions and explored aspects of national diversity from Western Europe to Asia from the 16th century to the current day. Approaches varied from case studies to examinations of broad international developments. BÖRRIES KUZMANY (Vienna) opened the workshop with introductory thoughts about the importance of acknowledging national diversity in history and current societies. National diversity has always existed; not just in Central Eastern Europe, where most research has been focused on, but also in other parts of Europe. In understanding national diversity in other chronological and regional contexts, we can understand our own focus area better and connect to a broader picture.

EMMANUEL DALLE MULLE (Madrid) presented a paper on how to understand the word minority. Dalle Mulle traced shifts in the meaning of and perspectives on the term “minority” from the 19th century to the mid 20th century. In his corpus linguistics of German, English, French and Spanish Dalle Mulle showed that the term “minority” referred to kings and monarchs before the 18th century and shifted to parliamentary minorities in the 18th and 19th century. Minority as a concept of rigid, nationality-based minority only started to appear in the late 19th century and reached international salience in the early Interwar period, when its meaning shifted from group to collective rights. Dalle Mulle questioned the traditional view that the concern for minority rights disappeared after 1945, instead showing new peaks in the 1970s and 1990s, with an expanding meaning including diversity in gender or disability. The changing semantics of diversity can show us how this difference is perceived in a transition from a simple plurality/minority dichotomy to a salient homogeneity/heterogeneity approach.

OSKAR MULEJ (Vienna) set out to improve our understanding of national diversity in the ideological spectrum. Mulej showed that the traditional left-right spectrum of politics is too simple, context dependent and arbitrary for understanding approaches to diversity, as it lacks deeper analytical value. Mulej uses the concrete approaches of Liberalism, Marxism, Conservatism and Fascism to diversity as examples. Liberalism both affirmed and denied national diversity in its historical discourses, while Marxism has traditionally had a very fluid and ambiguous approach to national diversity, where theory and practice often diverged. Conservatism proved to be most difficult to pin down, as it had anti-national and pro-national but anti-diversity approaches. Fascism also proved to be ambiguous in its approach to national diversity, e.g. the German fascists granting substantial minority right to the Danish minority. Mulej shows that while there is no clear connection between ideology and approach to diversity, there is an interesting link between the ideological position and the conceptualization and real-life approach to diversity.

TIMO AAVA (Jerusalem) opened the second panel with a talk revisiting the history of minority rights in the Baltic and integrating reflections about minority rights in general. Aava explained how the roots of the Law of Cultural Self Government of 1925 went back to the 1918 independence manifesto and the Estonian constitution. National minorities of at least 3.000 people in Estonia had the right to establish self government in their cultural affairs in a non-territorial, non-political way. Two national minorities implemented this law: Germans and Jews. The law, while being connected to Austromarxist ideas, also had deeper roots in Estonian and Russian political thought, which intensified after the February Revolution in Russia. Aava expanded on the reasons for why this law came into being. In a comparison of the state’s approach to German and Jewish self government, Aava showed that skepticism towards German self-government was the reason why it took seven years to pass the Law on Self Government and why the Jewish self-government enjoyed less state control and was less salient in public discourse.

STEPHANIE ZIEHAUS (Vienna) introduced the concept of “ethnicity” in a paper about the Russian and Chinese Empires’ similarities in their approach to the diversity of their shared borderlands. Ziehaus showed that both empires introduced “ethnicity” as a socio-political category to use as a tool of governance and that these empires deliberately constructed ethnic groups as administrative units in their pursuit of state building to facilitate easier taxation and rule. Working with a theory of cultural transfer, Ziehaus showed how social structures were transferred from their original local context into a broader imperial context, where clan units functioned as manageable and effective social units, based on heritability. In setting up these systems, the empire disrupted and then reconsolidated clans. In both empires, clans grew together into ethnic groups, as people were administered according to their institutionalised ethnicity based on genealogical lineage. Today, both successor states struggle with their colonial legacy and use the wording of “ethnicity” instead of “nationality” to downgrade native populations.

MARINA GERMANE (Glasgow) took the panel to the international level. The interwar system of international minority protection was not just unprecedented in history, but remains unsurpassed to this day. Germane followed the history of internationalism from Jeremy Bentham’s 1822 proposal to create an international tribunal, which infused the term “international” with normative progressive values, but was seen at the time as utopian, to Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points, which were closely related to Bentham’s proposal, though not seen as utopian. Germane showed that internationalism had a firm grip on the public mind in the interwar period. The League of Nations recognised the need for a new beginning of international cooperation and became the target of exaggerated hopes by some minorities. Germane described the debates as to whether minorities should receive group or individual rights as a symptom of a much larger dilemma: What are minorities in the context of international law? These debates, while not leading to a concrete conclusion, showed that minority rights played an important role in the international agenda.

ALEXANDER TEUTSCH (Vienna) presented a microhistorical case analysis on 30 former Austrian judges in Italy. After Italy annexed South Tyrol, these German-speaking and German-educated judges faced a great uncertainty. Under the military administration judges were distrusted, while the administration was cautiously amending the law. Judges were provisionally confirmed in 1922, after three years of civil administration. Measures of Italisanisation were taken in 1923 and a commission was called in to decide which judges could remain. Ten judges were dismissed almost immediately for political reasons or due to their poor Italian. The 20 remaining judges were assigned to work on panels with Italian judges in medium to large courts in firmly Italian-speaking areas. The judges’ new superiors reported on their Italianisation-progress. Only four judges were considered trustworthy enough to finish their career in Italy, however their “diversity” remained a constantly mentioned aspect. Teutsch’s case study showed the Italian approach to the German minority in the interwar period on a micro level.

OLENA PALKO (Basel) closed the panel with a paper on the intricacies of the Soviet nationality policies. As the Bolsheviks saw diversity as an opportunity to strengthen their leadership, national diversity was something to be preserved, even re-invented, in order to ensure the victory of socialism. The state had a vested interest in defining nations and the five founding Soviet Republics of the USSR remained in control over areas important for nation building, e.g. education. The USSR needed active and willing participation of the people to legitimise the union, and promotion of national diversity played a large part in this. Palko then focused on the case of the Ukrainian SSR, where ethnicity became territorially recognised in the 1920s and territory lines were redrawn in an experiment of reconstituting Ukraine along ethnic lines – which ended in failure. Palko found that the more “peculiar”, e.g. non-territorial, a group was the more attention it got from the state, which often ended in repression, persecution or even violence, which was a common response by the state to its own failure of dealing with diversity in a constructive way.

ÁGOSTON BERECZ (Budapest) presented a paper on peasant culture and nationalisation in multilingual regions. Looking at Romanian peasant folk dress, Berecz examined how Romanians under Hungarian rule integrated the Romanian national colors into their dress and how the Hungarian Ministry of Interior responded to this “national” accessorizing. The 1867 Compromise had installed a Hungarian regime in Transylvania and banned foreign national symbols, including the colors of the Romanian flag. As these additions to folk dress were illegal, the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior launched investigations and took judicial matters. Berecz found that the ban and its fines were only selectively implemented to punish certain individuals and communities. In 1910 was this ban partially lifted to allow accessorizing clothing; however, local gendarmerie did not always follow this new law. In 1914 the ban was lifted entirely in order to drum up enthusiasm for the war, only for tides to shift again when Romania entered the war on the opposing side.

KRISZTA ESZTER SZENDRŐI (Vienna) then presented a paper analysing the dynamics of the Yiddish language in Israel in its relationship to Haredi Judaism from a sociolinguistic background. Hasidic Jews, who have a dynastic leadership with a religious and political power-wielding Rebbe on top and to whom the preservation of their lifestyle is very important, make up around half of the Israeli Haredi population. In most these communities, Yiddish is a very vital and high-prestige language used in daily life, education and media. Szendrői pointed out that Yiddish is restricted to Hasidic communities and language functions as way to distinguish them from secular Jews. However, the use of Yiddish varies greatly from dynasty to dynasty, as top down language policies from the Rebbe are taken very seriously. Szendrői compared the different Hasidic dynasties in their attitude towards Yiddish, modern Hebrew and Zionism and found a general correlation between Anti-Zionism and Yiddish use, though not in all groups.

TOMASZ HEN-KONARSKI (Warsaw) closed the last panel with a paper on Greek Catholic education at the Barbareum in Vienna, a state-run seminary which existed from 1775 to 1784. The goal of the seminary was to unify the liturgy among all Greek Catholics from different regions. The original policies of the Barbareum were designed with Hungarian communities in mind; however Ukrainians became the biggest numerical community after the First Partition of Poland. The “old” groups dominated the Barbareum, while the Ukrainians were marginalised. The seminary also became a space of conflict between Maria Theresia’s policies to solve political conflicts and the students using it as an opportunity to build networks and transform their communities. Hen-Konarski points to the Barbareum as an interesting case study for how the Austrian monarchy managed diversity in attempts to strengthen Eastern Catholics and promoted enlightenment among their communities. While the Barbareum failed in its initial goal of unifying liturgical traditions, it facilitated contact between communities and gave young men the opportunity to become new elites.

In her keynote lecture on Börries Kuzmany’s new monograph “Vom Umgang mit nationaler Vielfalt: Eine Geschichte der nicht-territorialen Autonomie in Europa” (De Gruyter 2024), JANA OSTERKAMP (Augsburg) emphasized how much the history of non-territorial autonomy in the Habsburg and the Russian empire were intertwined. She pointed to both connections and commonalities to the differences between the approaches in these two empires as well as to the transfer process linking these developments to the Interwar period. Non-territorial autonomy proved to be a flexible implement in the international arena and throughout the ideological spectrum in Central and Eastern Europe.

The workshop on diversity, organized by the History of National Diversity research group, brought together participants from different disciplines, who presented unique approaches to researching diversity using a broad variety of methods. This variety enabled a comprehensive dialog that reflected the complexity of diversity, including but not limited to linguistic and confessional diversity, in European history and modern societies. In the many discussions, thoughts on the future perspectives of our research group encouraged a further interdisciplinary and international opening of researching the history of national diversity.

Conference Overview:

Börries Kuzmany (Vienna): Welcome addresses and introduction

Panel 1: The semantics of national diversity

Emmanuel Dalle Mulle (Madrid): Understanding the vocabulary of diversity: difference – heterogeneity – plurality

Oskar Mulej (Vienna): Understanding national diversity in the ideological spectrum

Round table discussion: Anna Adorjáni (Augsburg), Ágoston Berecz (Budapest), Yuki Murata (Regensburg), Alexander Teutsch (Vienna)

Panel 2: The state responding to diversity: empires – nation states – federations – international organisations

Timo Aava (Jerusalem): Revisiting the history of minority rights in the Baltic

Stephanie Ziehaus (Vienna): The Russian and Chinese Empires’ response to diversity and cultural transfer

Marina Germane (Glasgow): The internationalisation of minority rights and transnational minority activism

Alexander Teutsch (Vienna): Infiltrates, bravi italiani, or bear- ers of diversity? – formerly Austrian judges at Italian courts (1924–1944)

Olena Palko (Basel): The intricacies of the Soviet nationality policies between “federation of nations” and “federation of republics”

Roundtable discussion: Jana Osterkamp (Augsburg), Gennadii Korolov (Warsaw), Roni Gechtman (Halifax); Julia Bavouzet (Vienna)

Panel 3: Practices of diversity: religion – language – culture

Ágoston Berecz (Budapest): Peasant culture meeting nationalisation in multilingual regions

Kriszta Eszter Szendrői (Vienna): Di heilige sprakh Yidish ‘The Holy Yiddish language’: The bond between Yiddish language and (Ultra-Orthodox) Judaism

Tomasz Hen-Konarski (Warsaw): Viennese Barbareum, 1775–1784: Forging New Elites for Austria’s Eastern Catholic Communities

Round table discussion: Dietlind Hüchtker (Vienna), Yuki Murata (Regensburg), Robert Devetak (Ljubljana), Gábor Egry (Budapest)