Ever since Wolfgang Schivelbusch's groundbreaking The Railway Journey (1986), cultural history and interdisciplinary approaches have influenced research on the history of railroad lines, railroad buildings, and railroad networks. Nadja Weck's microhistory is no exception in this regard. She focuses on the connection between railroads and urban development through the example of the East-Central European city of L'viv (Lwów in Polish, Lemberg in German), concentrating mainly on the period between the 1830s and the 1920s. During this time, L'viv first was part of the Habsburg Crown Land of Galicia and subsequently integrated into the Second Polish Republic. Today, the city is in Western Ukraine. Nadja Weck draws extensively from methods of urban history. Not surprisingly for a study on space, the spatial turn also informs her research. In this context, the author builds on Henri Lefebvre's seminal work The Production of Space (1974) to untangle the many layers of meaning associated with L'viv and its railroad station. At the center is the question of how “the new means of transportation mobilized actors, influenced their agency and … how it changed the position of L'viv in the region; how it changed its urban territory, and finally, a particular space within the city,” which is the railroad station (3).
The first section of the book focuses on the development of L'viv into a critical traffic junction. This part also showcases one of the significant strengths of the author's research, which is the focus on individual actors and their agency. In the Habsburg Empire, already in the late 1820s and early 1830s, railroad pioneer Franz Riepl envisioned a line that would connect all parts of the Habsburg Empire—peripheral L'viv included. Local Galician magnates such as Aleksander Fredro and Leon Sapieha drew from Riepl's ideas and advocated for investment in the novel infrastructure. However, it was a long way from these early visions to the completion of L'viv's connection with the Galician capital of Kraków in 1861, when the railroad linked the city not only to the developing Habsburg network but also to the European one. With more lines added, the town developed into a critical railroad junction, and it was only then that “the production of material space” (126) came into fruition.
The second section analyzes the “mental production of space” (133), manifesting itself in the discussions on the right location for railroad stations. Subsequently, these discussions led to the “material production of space” (159), influencing the urban fabric. For example, there was opposition against the construction of the main station 2.5 kilometers away from the city center. As in many other cities in densely populated Europe, this decision was informed by the lower price of land outside of the existing developed area. However, the city administration feared that L'viv's economy would miss out on the economic boost facilitated by the railroad. Yet, as Nadja Weck shows, the city developed more dynamically along the access roads to the railroad stations. Both the number of buildings and the number of inhabitants grew more dynamically than in other parts of L'viv. Also, the main station soon had to be replaced by a larger one to accommodate the rising traffic.
Finally, the third section is a profound analysis of L'viv's main station, its interior and exterior designs, and the image the building evoked about the city and builds on Jeffrey Richards and John M. MacKenzie's The Railway Station (1986). Railroad stations reflect the local and global architectural fashion of the time, and they are much more than just functional buildings. Citing three contemporary texts on L'viv's main station, Nadja Weck draws from Yuri Lotman's concept of the semiosphere to analyze the railroad station microcosm. Following this line of thought, she argues that the main station is a borderspace. Here, many actors from different social strata interact at least temporarily, thus mutually influencing each other.
The overall organization of the book and its connections to theoretical works are compelling. However, sometimes the reader wonders about the broader implications of L'viv as part of a European railroad network, such as in Karl Schlögel's work on railroad timetables as “protocols of civilization” (In Space We Read Time [2016]). While Nadja Weck is brilliant in positioning the city within the Habsburg Empire and its network, she is somewhat less successful in highlighting the international implications for trade and travel. To give just one example, Galicia is not the only region connected to the Russian Empire relatively late; this is also true for Eastern Prussia. The reasons can be found in the harsh customs regime of the Russian Empire that only eased somewhat in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Also, Nadja Weck shows how dynamically import and export developed. However, we learn relatively little about trade routes. The neglect of a more global view is also visible in the oversimplifying statement that the steam engine was the “real catalyst of the development” of a “globalization boost” (24–25)—it is worth mentioning the other two driving forces behind these economic changes, specifically the steamship and the telegraph. From an editorial standpoint, the many historical city maps are difficult to read. Here, enlarged sections figuring the railroad stations and the city quarters in question would have helped the reader better follow the author's line of thought.
These minor shortcomings notwithstanding, this is a well-researched, fascinating study. It adds to the scholarship on L'viv, the Habsburg Empire, and East-Central Europe in particular, and our knowledge of mobility space and city development more generally.
