Czernowitz und die Bukowina in frühen Dokumenten und Reiseberichten: Vom Werden eines habsburgischen Kronlandes (1775–1875) by Ion Lihaciu (review)

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• Czernowitz und die Bukowina in frühen Dokumenten und Reiseberichten: Vom Werden eines habsburgischen Kronlandes (1775–1875) by Ion Lihaciu
• Joseph W. Moser

Ion Lihaciu, Czernowitz und die Bukowina in frühen Dokumenten und Reiseberichten: Vom Werden eines habsburgischen Kronlandes (1775–1875). Bukowinastudien IV. Kaiserslautern and Mehlingen: Parthenon Verlag, 2022. 276 pp.

Czernowitz became a part of the Habsburg Empire in 1775, and over the course of the next 139 years until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Czernowitz’s development as Austria’s easternmost outpost was a remarkable part of the empire’s history. Ion Lihaciu’s Czernowitz und die Bukowina in frühen Dokumenten und Reiseberichten: Vom Werden eines habsburgischen Kronlandes(1775–1875)—the fourth volume in the Bukowinastudien series— [End Page 109] sheds light on the first hundred years, in which Czernowitz and the Bukovina transformed from being a part of the Ottoman Empire to a province within Austria’s crown land Galicia to then formally becoming a separate crown land in 1861. This book features a variety of primary sources, as testimonies of the area’s transition to becoming Austrian and German-speaking.

The book contains a Vorwort and eighteen primary texts numbered in Roman numerals, arranged chronologically from 1777 to 1875. These German-language texts not only show the development of the area; they also demonstrate how Austria transitioned from the Enlightenment through the Napoleonic era and then from the repressive Biedermeier to 1848, finally becoming a constitutional monarchy in 1867. In the same period, the Industrial Revolution brought railways to Austria, and the once-remote town of Czernowitz, which had been reachable only by a long postal coach ride, grew closer to Vienna, while the people in Vienna became progressively more aware of Czernowitz and the Bukovina as well.

The first text in the collection from 1777 is entitled: “Der Wald Bukowina, in der Moldau, oder vielmehr ein ansehnlicher Strich Landes, auf welchen dieser Nahme ausgedehnt worden, und den man auch die Bukreine nennet [. . .]” (27–29), which describes a bucolic but underdeveloped part of Eastern Europe. Text XXVI from 1874 is entitled “Universität Czernowitz” (243–51) and is about the founding of the university. Czernowitz actually competed with Salzburg and Trieste in the Reichsrat in Vienna for the privilege of opening a university, and it is quite remarkable that Czernowitz was awarded the right to found a university in preference to these two other Western cities. These two texts demonstrate exactly how much had changed in less than a hundred years.

Of course, much had happened in the interim. In addition to several Reiseberichte, which introduced western Austrians to this distant eastern land in the monarchy, text VII from 1823 is entitled “Reise des Kaisers in die Bukowina” (79–85). Austrians are learning about the Bukovina, while people in Czernowitz and the Bukovina learned more about Austria. German-speaking elementary school teachers built up a school system that introduced the people to the German language. The Polonization of Galicia led to Yiddish-speaking Jews moving from Galicia to Bukovina, where they could use German—a language closely related to Yiddish—and contributed to Bukovina becoming a German-speaking crown land, in addition to the many other languages already spoken there. [End Page 110]

In the 1840s and 1850s, the texts deal with the region’s desire to separate from Galicia, as text XIX from 1848, “Landespetition” (191–97), and text XXI from 1856, “Landeswappen” (219–23), describe. The establishment of a local press and journalism is described in text XXII from 1862, “Bukowina, Landes-und Amts-Zeitung” (223–27). The process of developing a newspaper scene in Czernowitz progressed in tandem with Austria slowly becoming more open to allowing a “free” press, as the monarchy slowly moved to becoming a constitutional monarchy by 1867.

This book is a fascinating resource not only for scholars interested in Czernowitz and the Bukovina but also for anyone studying the Habsburg monarchy from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century, since much of the development that occurred in Czernowitz was directly related to changes within Austria at the same time.

Joseph W. Moser West Chester University Copyright © 2024 Austrian Studies Association ...