Trialism
Trialism (from Greek τρία 'three' or Latin trialis 'containing three') describes the Austro-Slav efforts in the second half of the 19th century to transform the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy with a Slavic part of the empire into a tripartite state. The Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand was considered a representative of this trialism.
variants
Several different models, which Slavic part of the empire should be the third main country next to the German-speaking Austria and Hungary , competed with each other:
- Bohemia , Moravia and Austro-Silesia were connected to Austria for as long as Hungary. In 1526, both kingdoms fell to the Habsburgs by succession . In 1871 Emperor Franz Joseph rejected a Bohemian settlement . The chances of success of such an equality of the Czechs was after 1890 with the victory of the Pan-Slavic Young Czechs on austroslawistischen Old Czechs low. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the First World War, Russia also demanded this variant of a confederative solution from Vienna. The Moravian Compromise in 1905 was a partial question about a settlement with the Czechs of Bohemia .
- Croatia-Slavonia with Dalmatia , and possibly Bosnia-Herzegovina : Austria had acquired the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia together with Hungary, and with the gain of Bosnia in 1878, more Croats were added. Equal rights for the Catholic Croats and the Muslim Bosniaks should prevent them from uniting South Slavs with Orthodox Serbs . Archduke Franz Ferdinand in particular advocated this option, but Hungary opposed it, to whose half of the empire Croatia belonged - even if the Hungarian-Croatian compromise in 1868 had brought a certain degree of autonomy. In addition to the Austrian and Hungarian parts of the empire, a South Slav empire under Croatian leadership was to emerge, the numerically strongest south Slav group in the empire. This South Slav state was intended to weaken Hungary on the one hand and counteract Greater Serbian ambitions on the other in the interests of the entire empire . With the intensification of the Croatian-Hungarian conflict from 1904, the chances of this variant decreased. The southern Slavic areas of the Habsburg Empire were predominantly Croatian, some parts were dominated by Serbs and Slovenes. Further annexations in the Balkans would only have strengthened the Serbian element. This and the disappointed Croatian reliance on Serbia led to the First World War , the first victim of which was to be Franz Ferdinand of all people. The South Slav trialist program was at the forefront of reform plans for most of the last two generations of the Habsburg Empire, although in its conservative form the Slovenes were not included. The establishment of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an independent country in 1908 ( Bosnian annexation crisis ) and the recognition of Islam in 1912 should not least strengthen the Muslim element as a counterweight to Croatian nationalism.
- Galicia and Poland : In 1772, Galicia fell from Poland to Austria. In contrast to the Czechs, Serbs and other Slavs of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the Poles mostly did not oppose them, remained loyal to the Austrian monarchy and cultivated a traditional friendship with the Hungarians. They remained loyal to Vienna because from the 1860s onwards they were not prevented from introducing the Polish language , which replaced the official German language , in the Galician administration and in the school system . The Polish autonomy in Galicia did not take into account the interests of the Ukrainian Ruthenians there , who resisted the Polonization of Eastern Galicia. In 1871 Emperor Franz Joseph also rejected a Polish autonomy draft for Galicia. During the First World War, consideration was given to the annexation of Russian Poland to the Danube Monarchy. Vienna saw the advantage of this option in the medium-term consolidation of Cisleithania , to which Galicia belonged. Naturally, this Austropolitan solution brought conflicts with Russia and Germany . The peace of bread with Ukraine in 1918 at the latest brought this project to failure.
Assessment in research
Trialism ruled out a more comprehensive solution to the nationality problem. Croatian trialism, like Hohenwart's plan for the reconciliation of the Czechs in 1871, only considered the national status of a single ethnic group. However, the Austrian nationality question was so involved that the treatment of one of these questions obviously influenced that of all the others. In the last decades of the monarchy, the concept of trialism, due to the Serbian and the associated South Slavic antagonism, had little chance of being realized in addition to the natural rejection by Hungary. While trialism had, alongside Croatian conservative circles, the heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand as a sponsor, his reform plans soon developed in the direction of comprehensive federalization.
Emperor Karl's manifesto of October 1918 to transform the state into a Danube League of Nations came too late in the disintegration of Austria-Hungary at the end of the war.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry on trialism in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
- ↑ a b c d e Comp. Entry on The question of nationalities in old Austria in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
- ↑ Problems and potentials of a multi-ethnic state. habsburger.net.
- ^ Robert A. Kann : The nationality problem of the Habsburg Monarchy. History and ideas of the national endeavors from the Vormärz to the dissolution of the Reich in 1918. Volume 1: The Reich and the Peoples. Böhlau, Graz et al. 1964, p. 441.
- ^ With the Fez on your head for Austria-Hungary. Adelheid Wölfl in Der Standard online, January 20, 2014.
- ^ Robert A. Kann: The nationality problem of the Habsburg Monarchy. History and ideas of the national efforts from the Vormärz to the dissolution of the Reich in 1918. Volume 2: Ideas and plans for reform of the Reich. Böhlau, Graz et al. 1964, pp. 196 and 256–263.