This year's publication of the Austrian History Yearbook marks its fiftieth edition. As we celebrate this major milestone, it is a timely moment to reflect on where we have come, where we are currently, and where we may be going in the next half century. Admittedly, the 2019 edition is somewhat more expensive than the first volume edited by R. John Rath in 1965, which was priced at $3 an issue. Volume 50 also reflects a significant and salutary demographic change that has occurred across the academic world of both North America and Europe. The only women listed on the editorial page of the first volume were the three “business managers” of Rice University. All members of the editorial board and the authors of both the articles and book reviews were male. Today, we have a markedly better gender balance on the editorial board, and six of the nine article authors in the current issue are female. Our reach, too, has expanded. With Cambridge University Press our presence is now worldwide. All of us—readers, authors, and editors—should be justly proud of these accomplishments and look back with gratitude to that initial group of scholars who had the vision to launch the AHY.

What about our content and thematic focus? What shifts have occurred in the past fifty years? Like any historical journal, the AHY reflects broader trends that have transpired in the discipline. While change is inevitable, however, the core questions that animated that initial group of scholars back in 1965 have carried through to the present and feature prominently in our 2019 edition. The very first article that appeared in the AHY was a modestly titled essay, “Reflections on Austrian History,” by septuagenarian Hans Kohn. Could there have been a more appropriate individual to have written the AHY’s initial article? A Jewish émigré from Prague, Kohn has been hailed as the most influential theorist of nationalism in the twentieth century. In the essay's opening paragraph, Kohn noted, “Defining and writing the history of Austria from the Carolingian frontier marches to the Second Austrian Republic presents a unique problem” (4). That “unique problem,” which Kohn so quickly identified, presents a continued challenge for the AHY today. Austria—what was it, where was it, when was it? Our current issue reflects a broad and expansive view of the Austrian world. Chronologically, we start in the sixteenth century with a consideration of the news during the Long Turkish War (1593–1606). How did accounts and rumors of the conflict spread across Central Europe? To answer this question Robyn Radway examines a broadsheet from 1595 announcing late-breaking developments along the Danube. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, we move to the Second Republic and a consideration of cultural diplomacy in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Though there are certainly marked differences between volumes 1 and 50, there are at a deeper reading a number of thematic parallels between the two editions. Questions of identity, both corporate and individual, have always been a central feature of the AHY. In the first edition Hugo Hantsch explored the nationality problems of Austria-Hungary. For students of nationalism in any geographic field, those investigating Central Europe have offered thoughtful reflections on this complicated phenomenon. The AHY has been an important forum for much of this critical scholarship. In our current edition two of our authors, Iris Nachum and Ilse Lazaroms, examine Jewish communities and their relationship with other ethnic groups in the complicated social mosaic of the Habsburg lands. Nachum focuses on Prague and Bohemia, while Lazaroms explores a Hungarian émigré community in the United States and their perception of their former homeland during the White Terror of 1919–24. Rita Krueger, by contrast, examines the identity of one individual, the eighteenth-century adventurer Baron Franz von der Trenck. Born at the very southern tip of Italy, the baron adopted a number of Central European identities in his colorful career. Krueger sorts through the many lives of the fascinating baron from the family's Prussian origins to his posthumous fame as a Croatian hero. Finally, there is our Kann lecture and the question of Turkish identity from the vantage point of Central Europe. Here Larry Wolff considers how European musicians conceptualized the Ottomans on the operatic stage. Edward Said notwithstanding, the singing Turk was normally not a character of oriental exoticism but instead “a figure in whom European publics were able to recognize themselves and their own contemporary concerns” (13).

In the first volume, articles on Metternich, Karl Renner, and the Austrian Presidency in the First and Second Republics highlight another continuity with the present. That emphasis on politics in the first issue remains, mutatis mutandis, a prominent field of inquiry for the AHY. Mark Cornwall presents an intriguing study of treason through several celebrated case studies in the early twentieth century. With an eye on the Stalinist show trials, Cornwall demonstrates how authorities could so easily fabricate and manipulate evidence in the courtrooms of Zagreb and Vienna to ensure the desired verdict. Nancy Wingfield also examines this critical period but through the lens of prostitution. What were the politics of prostitution in post–World War I Vienna? How did authorities regulate and control the oldest of professions when a new republic had replaced an old empire? Likewise, Sabine Jesner examines individuals’ relationship with the state but in a very different setting. She takes us back to the eighteenth century and the Habsburg Banat to unravel the institutional politics behind early attempts of state-based welfare. In our final article, Alexander Golovlev may provide some hints of where the AHY is heading as we enter our sixth decade. The politics of Volume 1 were those of “great men” and their institutions. Golovlev illustrates how our understanding of a phenomenon such as diplomacy has expanded so dramatically since Arthur Breycha-Vauthier wrote that initial article on Metternich in 1965. Golovlev, in contrast, focuses on cultural diplomacy and how the French sought to win Austrian hearts and minds through their traveling dance tours in the years immediately following World War II. Indeed as a whole, all the articles in the current volume deal with very familiar themes. Our authors, though, demonstrate how methodological innovation and the creative use of new source material have broadened our understanding of topics such as politics and nationalism. A new and exciting half century awaits!