Central cities: a multicultural model?

The choice of cities studied in this volume is quite wide: it includes political capitals (Berlin, Vienne, Prague, Warsaw, Budapest), regional metropolises (Odessa, Dantzig, Lemberg/Lviv, Czernowitz), finally the city of Sibiu/Hermannstadt. In view of the definition of central Europe given by the publishers of this collective, who mainly refer to the Mitteleuropa German and Zentraleuropa Habsbourg, the presence of Odessa could surprise. The case of Warsaw, placed under Russian domination after the fall of the Napoleonic Empire, also recalls that the geographical definition of Central Europe, of which the Polish capital is undoubtedly part, does not cross the historical definitions of this third Europe with variable geometry located between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. These considerations are nothing to do with the great interest of the studies of Katrin Steffen on Varsovie and Boris Czerny on Odessa.

Multiculturality and multiculturalism

The two publishers introduce an interesting distinction between multiculturality and multiculturalism. “” Multiculturality designates the fact of a social body integrating several cultures, which can be lived without discourse, sometimes even without conscience ; Multiculturalism is a social project, where the coexistence of several cultures is identified as a model and which therefore result for collective rights. “They thus recall that” Vienna in 1900 had 63 % of foreigners (…). In 1890, only 39% of the inhabitants of Budapest were born there, while 52% came from other provinces of the Kingdom of Hungary, very diverse ethnically. By comparison, Paris had only 6% of foreigners at the turn of the century. »»

If it is true that “ the daily experience of this plurality and its constant evaluation in politics, press, culture in the broad sense “Characterizes the Habsbourg system, it is doubtful that the Austro-Hungarian compromise of 1867, then the successive compromises intended to guarantee the balance of nationalities in each province, were inspired by the project of intercultural harmonization that will be magnified by the” Habsbourg myth “Intellectuals and novelists, especially after the disappearance of the old” Cacania ». In 1867, it involved saving the cohesion of the Habsbourg monarchy after Sadowa by conceding to nationalities a part of cultural autonomy and regionalization. After 1871, the Habsbourg central power knows that the Germans and the Hungarians must be reassured about their hegemony in both parties of the two -headed monarchy, so as not to encourage German and Magyar nationalism. If the Habsbourg system has developed the institutionalization of plurality with some success, the objective was the preservation of totum Dynastics, not pluralism or multiculturalism and contemporaries only perceived the rise of the opposite principle: nationalism.

Five capital cities

In his contribution devoted to Vienna, one of the most brilliant of the volume, the Viennese historian Moritz Csáky invites us to think of the Austrian capital as the microcosm where the macrocosm of central Europe is reflected. This is a “ concept of polyphonic and hybrid culture “And not a naive representation of” Utopia of cultural plurality (P. 36). In his study on Prague “, Xavier Galmiche introduces the suggestive formula of” Structural and cyclical multiculturality Which has the merit of emphasizing the historical discontinuities that characterize Central Europe. Until the Second World War, the vicinity of the Czechs, the Germans and the Jews in Prague is a “ conflictual sociability “, Some institutions such as the university becoming from the 1890s the theater of a” small cultural guerrillas “(Jan Kren) which highlights the two slopes of the Prague fate,” both multiculturalist and a culturalist ». To the spirit of conquering the czevage, which triumphs in the aftermath of the First World War, replied a “ ideological multiculturalism Who asserted himself in the 1920s. “” After the Second World War and the expulsion of the Germans, Czechoslovakia (…) thought of itself as a Slavic country now homogeneous ». Today, “ The deceased German-Judéo-aCheque multiculturality “Has become a myth and a place of memory (“ largely intended for tourism “Note Xavier Galmiche, while new multicultural tensions have appeared, the best known of which is linked to the presence” roma ».

Catherine Horel, on the other hand, shows that the strong population growth of the Hungarian capital went hand in hand, from 1850 to the First World War with the affirmation of her national identity Magyare. “” Omnipresent at the start of XIX^e A century, the German language has erased for the benefit of Hungarian. (…) The Jews, who have long been one of the main components of Hungarian Germanity, quickly assimilated. “The Slovak also have completely assimilated, the Croats remaining” more reluctant ». If Catherine Horel believes that around 1900, “ Budapest does not offer the cosmopolitan show that characterizes Vienna », She emphasizes, however, that at that time more than half of the inhabitants of Budapest was at least bilingual. Magyarisation policy is severe: Slovak, Romanian, Serbian and Croatian minorities remain deprived of the right to vote. From 1920, Hungary of Horthy, decreased by its minorities which were attached to the new successor states of Austria-Hungary formed a more “ holist “, In which the Jews represent some 25% of the population (54% of Hungarian Jews living in Budapest), which allows anti -Semites to designate them as” The inner enemy (P. 80). The post-war national-communism does not leave much room for multiculturality, which has experienced revival in Budapest since the 1980s and especially since 1989.

Studying the case of Berlin, Olivier Agard combines the diachronic perspective, which retraces the contribution of the Huguenots, the Jews, the Protestants of Bohemia and the Poles, and the analysis of the symbolic and identity issues which guide a “ memory policy »In which historians participate in the primary and which tend to highlight the Berlin multiculturality in the name of today’s interculturalism. Olivier Agard stressed that in 1909, foreigners represented 13% of the student population, compared to 17.7% in Paris. Technical disciplines in particular attract a regular flow of Russian students. To the comparison with Paris (which somewhat corrects the words of the introduction of the volume on relatively lower interculturality in Paris, if the population of foreigners temporarily staying in a city can be taken into account in a survey on their interculturality: question of method which, unless we are mistaken, is not addressed in this volume), we can add the comparison of Berlin with the University of Vienne which, until 1914, foreign students.

Four confines cities

Five studies devoted to capitals are for four portraits of cities of regional importance. Andrei Corbea-Hoisie, the well-known specialist in the cultural and literary history of Bucovine, presents Czernowitz, Cernauati, Tshernovtsy, Tshernivtsi recalls that “ During the 1910 census, the 85,458 inhabitants of Czernowitz declared as a language of use, at 48% German, 18% the Ukrainian, 17% the Polish, 16% Romanian. At the same time, 32% declared himself a Jewish confession, 27% Roman Catholic, 24% Greek Orthodox, 11% Greek Catholics (or uniate) and 5% Protestants. ». Within this cultural heterogeneity, German played the role of Lingua Franca. But multiculturality was not transformed into interculturality: it is ultimately nationalist logic, with its procession of exclusions and persecution, unleashed by the First World War, which prevailed.

Delphine Bechtel devotes herself to “ Lemberg, Lwow, LVOV, LVIV: From “little Vienne” to the center of Ukrainian nationalism “, Made famous by novelists of Galician origin Joseph Roth and Jozef Wittlin. Revisiting this city where, according to Claudio Magris, was made a “ Ethical-cultural supranational », Delphine Bechtel recalls that at the end of XIX^e century, “ A kind of center-European “common culture”, based on the understanding of an identity with ethnic and cultural parameters Had appeared in Lemberg and that the Polish and Ukrainian national identity construction processes were parallel. The Jewish community, a third of the population, was divided into “ A myriad of political and religious tendencies ». Galicia and Lwow played the role of “ Ukrainian Piedmont »Place of the cultural renewal of this nationality. The bloody conflicts between Poles, Ukrainians and Jews, from the end of the First World War, the Nazi Reich, Stalinism constituted “ The brutal stages of violent “mono-ethnisation” From this city of the borders. D. Bechtel also deals in detail of the future of Lviv after 1945 and the “ resurgence of a local Galician identity. »»

In his contribution to Hermannstadt – Nagyszeben – Sibiu, Pierre de Trégomain condenses the history of German/Austrian, Hungarian and Romanian, Jewish and Tzigane multiculturality, of this regional center of Transylvania.

The case of Dantzig studied by Thomas Serrier, transports us to a different world. In Dantzig, multiculturality is reduced to German-Polish dualism, which makes it no less conflict … Here the ruptures and historical discontinuities have prevail, since the Prussian annexation of 1793. Exaltation of “ the outpost of Germanity in the east », On the one hand ; “” more or less complete negation of the German past “, In Poland after the Second World War, on the other hand: it was not until the 1990s that” begins “ The quest for multicultural roots in regions of northwest Poland ».

The genius of Vienna, writes Stefan Zweig in his Memoirs, “ has always been to harmonize ethnic and linguistic contrasts (…) Now it was easier to be a European. “At the end of this work we measure the irreducible gap which opposes this” retrospective utopia “To a historical reality in which interculturality has not allowed any model” interculturalist »To stabilize sustainably.