Die Sprachenvielfalt in der österreichisch-ungarischen Armee (1867–1918) by Tamara Scheer (review)

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• Die Sprachenvielfalt in der österreichisch-ungarischen Armee (1867–1918) by Tamara Scheer
• Joseph W. Moser

Tamara Scheer, Die Sprachenvielfalt in der österreichisch-ungarischen Armee (1867–1918). Vienna: Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, 2022. 432 pp.

From the period of the Ausgleich in 1867 until the end of World War I in 1918, the Austro-Hungarian army was the most unifying institution in a monarchy that was disintegrating with the rise of nationalism. Tamara Scheer examines the diversity of languages in the army, but even more than this, her book Die Sprachenvielfalt in der österreichisch-ungarischen Armee (1867–1918) demonstrates how the army attempted to provide linguistic equity and thus rally military conscripts behind their country and monarch. Obviously, this was not an easy task, and the reality proved to be more challenging with German remaining the unequally powerful language in the institution.

The language problem was new to the Habsburg armed forces. In the eighteenth century, there was a professional army, and officers could be commissioned from abroad, so the dominant language was often French. Latin was the language of official written communication in Hungary. In the nineteenth century, many of the languages of the empire were finally codified and demanded equality alongside the more established Western European languages. The introduction of military conscription also assured that all the languages of the empire were represented among the soldiers.

Scheer writes that the German language had the upper hand for practical reasons, and this was not necessarily a function of German nationalism (nor would it have been a beneficial strategy for maintaining the monarchy). The army regularly documented the language skills of its members, soldiers, [End Page 105] and officers at all ranks. Bilingual and polyglot speakers were often counted more than once, raising the numbers of German speakers vis-à-vis those who could speak Ruthenian, for example. NCOs who trained incoming soldiers were expected to know one imperial language beyond their native language, so that they could serve regiments with more than one language. Regiments could have more than one language in Austria if they had at least 20 percent of speakers in a particular language. Not every NCO was able to learn another language, and the army often turned a blind eye to those who did not achieve required levels of proficiency, sometimes simply reassigning them to another part of the empire, where their linguistic skills could be better matched. There were also many cases in which NCOs were denied promotion until they acquired the necessary language skills.

This book provides many examples of when and where the diversity of languages could become a challenging topic. For example, military bands would play the anthem multiple times in all the languages that were represented in a particular region, but then this would raise the question of the sequence of languages: "Jede Vereidigungszeremonie hatte mit der deutschsprachigen Gruppe zu beginnen und wurde dann nach einer festgesetzten Reihenfolge fortgesetzt, die auch für die Nennung in den Grundbuchblättern vorgeschrieben war: Deutsch, Ungarisch, Kroatisch, Tschechisch, Polnisch, Ruthenisch, Slowenisch, Slowakisch, Rumänisch und Italienisch" (116). German, Hungarian, Croatian, and Czech were thus at the top of the list, while Romanian and Italian were last. Sometimes the Slavic languages would be combined into one group, and while Polish and Ruthenian may have been close, Czech and Croatian were hardly mutually intelligible. As a non-Indo-European language, Hungarian was a particular challenge, though many officers indeed learned the language in this period. Interestingly, the two Romance languages, Romanian and Italian, were not at the top of the list. Yiddish speakers in Galicia and Bukovina were often counted as German speakers, thus skewing the German numbers, unless Yiddish-speaking servicemen declared Polish or Ruthenian as their language.

Scheer's research is based on archival census data from the military as well as reports from the war ministry, autobiographical accounts from soldiers and officers, and newspaper reports that addressed the use of language by the army. The educational deficits in some of the poorer parts of the realm [End Page 106] led to strange situations, including the rare case of a German-speaking NCO having to teach Ruthenian conscripts how to read and write in Ruthenian. Of...