Habsburg neu denken is a true homage to the heterogeneity of the Habsburg monarchy. Its thirty individually authored entries (each five to seven pages long) cover a variety of issues that its editors found the most representative for the Habsburg legacy today. As indicated in the title, the most characteristic aspect of this identity, the editors claim, are ambiguous, multilayered identities, multiculturalism, and cultural transfer. Politics, economy, demography, and other issues are present in the background, as factors shaping social imagination, attitudes, and memory.

The multiauthored and yet coherent and comprehensible format of the volume locates it halfway between a thematic encyclopedia and a methodological and ideological manifesto, concerning Habsburg studies as they ought to be, according to the editors and (some of) the authors. The skillful and intelligent composition of the book—including both theoretical questions and case studies embracing various social, political, and cultural issues—and the elegant narrative make it a fascinating and smooth read, although one wishes the volume was thicker and that the editors provided their authors more space. A mini-essay is a demanding genre, more appropriate for the pens of witty philosophers than theory-oriented historians, hence some of the entries in the book will certainly disappoint some readers, as they include little more than a general introduction and a hasty conclusion.

The thirty alphabetically organized essays vary in terms of their point of departure. Some of them touch upon a general concept (such as nationalism, multiculturalism, multilingualism, or migration) and attempt to frame it within the Habsburg context. Some discuss a case study in such broad fields, such as literature (Stefan Simonek) or theater (Elisabeth Groʒegger). Others deal with “typically Habsburg,” sociocultural phenomena (such as Josephinism, the post-Habsburg culinary community); while others focus on a particular text (Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities, Karl Emil Franzos's Halb-Asien, and Carl Emil Schorske's Fin-de-Siécle Vienna). Some of them, like the essays of Pieter M. Judson or Jan Surman, are clearly formulated methodological postulates. (Aleida Assmann's text on memory would also fit in this group, but it has nothing to do with the Habsburgs and East-Central Europe, so one may wonder why it was included.) Werner Suppanz's essay laments that these postulates have not penetrated the popular image of the monarchy in contemporary Austrian textbooks. Some essays attempt to combine a long story with a theoretical claim (e.g., Waltraud Heindl on Josephinism, Franz Fillafer on Austrian Islam, or Heidrum Zettblauer on female democrats), while others simply make a long story short (e.g., Simon Hadler on national animosities, or Helmut Konrad on the dissolution of Austria-Hungary).

Two general tendencies deserve to be mentioned. First, the volume generally leans toward “Vienna around 1900” (or at least between the 1880s and 1938) as the pars pro toto of the entire Habsburg legacy. This approach evidently stems from the editors’ intellectual debt to the most prominent scholars of the older generation, like Schorske and Moritz Csáky—the single most cited patron of the volume. The book hardly touches upon anything further back than the Enlightenment; nonetheless the essays concerning issues from the time before the last quarter of the nineteenth century certainly demonstrate there is a great deal to discover and reinterpret there for Habsburg scholars. Indeed, I believe, if one wishes to emphasize and rediscover the ambivalent nature of the Habsburg peoples’ identities, it would be reasonable to go further back in time, before these identities were vigorously claimed by modern nationalist movements, hungry for the loyalty of all members of their respective communities.

Second, the volume is clearly dominated by the modern Austrian perspective of viewing the monarchy, in which all its non-German cultures constitute little more than footnotes to its legacy (about half of the essays included do not bother about them at all). I assume this was unintended and in fact undesired by the editors, but what it proves is that “the new thinking” about the Habsburgs remains anchored in the traditional Austrian nearsightedness insofar as the non-German parts of the old monarchy are concerned. Moreover, I believe that such an approach is counterproductive regarding the book's emphasis on multiculturalism and cultural ambiguity. An important part of the problem, I suppose, is the clear tendency to view identity-related issues in the Habsburg monarchy according to the principles and ideas of today.

Finally, the main thesis of the book deserves serious discussion: Was a heterogeneous and ambivalent identity—cultural and ethnic—indeed typical for the Habsburg monarchy around 1900? Or is it an overreaction to the stereotype (still present in scholarly literature) of Central Europe at that time as the epicenter of chauvinist, ethnic nationalism? It seems to me we should take a closer look at various geographical locations, social milieus, and political organisms of the heterogeneous monarchy before accepting any of these views. The monarchy's cultural, social, and political realities were indeed versatile, and thus no case study of a city or a region should be considered as representative or typical for the entire Austria-Hungary. Habsburg neu denken is certainly an inspiring invitation for such a debate.