The present anthology, The Disputed Austro-Hungarian Border: Agendas, Actors, and Practices in Western Hungary/Burgenland after World War I, aims to shed new light on the development of this hotly disputed border region through new research on previously neglected aspects of the history of Burgenland following World War I.
The work is divided into four thematic sections preceded by an introduction by Hannes Grandits that introduces the subject matter and the state of research, provides basic information regarding historical events, and places the individual contributions in the volume in context. In the first section focusing on the demarcation of the new border, Ibolya Murber examines the political conditions in Austria and Hungary in the context of which the conflict over Burgenland was fought. The subsequent contributions by Michael Burri and Ferenc Jankó then deal with the practical aspects of drawing the new border. Burri traces the activities of the International Boundary Commission, an important topic that is often dismissed with a mere half-sentence even in modern studies on the Burgenland question. Jankó’s study, which details the involvement of two geographers from Graz in the drawing of the boundary, is an important microhistorical addition to Burri’s remarks.
In the second section, devoted to questions of economic (dis)integration and class polarization, Hans Grandits’ contribution is noteworthy. His account of the political and social impact of the wartime and postwar periods in the region, based not least on the experiences of two individuals, is both innovative and exciting. Equally significant is Sabine Schmitzner-Laszakovits’ treatment of the black-market economy in the Wiener Neustadt area during World War I and beyond, although the contribution is unfortunately a bit brief.
The third section, which deals with the role of old and new elites in Burgenland, has contributions by Gábor Egry and Melinda Harlov-Csortán. Ergy’s chapter chronicles social upheaval and political mobilization, and his contribution contains numerous new insights at both the micro and macro levels. Thematically narrower but equally thorough and detailed is Harlov-Csortán’s study on the fate of the Esterházy family’s estate, which was located on both sides of the border after it was redrawn. Only the title of the article, “The Birth of Burgenland and the End of the Eszterházy Estate,” is not entirely appropriate, given that the family still owns extensive properties in Burgenland today.
The fourth section addresses the situation of ethnic minorities in today’s Burgenland. Katharina Tyran uses the case of Ivan Dobrović to shed light on the fate of the Croatian minority between state-guaranteed minority rights on the one hand and personal loyalties on the other. In her contribution, Ursula Mindler-Steiner presents new research on the Roma and Jews of Burgenland in the interwar period, addressing the difficult position of both population groups in the immediate postwar period and their increasingly severe racial discrimination in the 1920s and 1930s.
The subtitle of this collection “Agendas, Actors, and Practices” links the chapters well by calling attention to both Austrian and Hungarian post-World War I political agendas and the politicians who promoted them. The contributions also show the reality of the postwar period by taking individual case studies to show how decisions made at both the local and national levels impacted the lives of ordinary individuals, from discrimination against Burgenland Croats to Jews and Roma. The military presence in the region made it a dangerous place for anyone viewed as “foreign” and difficult for those forced to choose sides as Austrians or Hungarians in a region that had once been a single entity with its own identity.
In summary, it can be said that this volume contains important new research-based studies on the history of Burgenland as a border region in the period after World War I. The specialist knowledge required to understand the context in which the events described took place can be assumed among the intended readership of the work. In addition, as stated at the outset of this review, the introduction provides general information on the subject, and the studies contained in this volume represent a significant enrichment of the state of research on the history of Burgenland as a border region. Still, certain topics, such as the population’s experience of violence in the fighting of Austrian forces versus Hungarian insurgents over the region in 1921 or everyday life in a conflict zone marked by a strong military presence in the first half of the 1920s, still await further study. This circumstance should not be seen as a criticism of this extremely successful work but merely as an indication that even after one hundred years, the history of Burgenland in all its facets is by no means exhausted.
