Introduction
“Recently I have noticed that agitation in meetings and through associations often exceeds a tolerable level […],” wrote Prime Minister Count Kasimir Felix Badeni in a confidential letter to Marquis Olivier de Bacquehem, governor of Styria, on 2 June 1897.Footnote 1 Badeni was reacting to the massive boom of aggressive agitation that erupted after the publication of the so-called Badeni language ordinances in April of that year. It was not merely the violation of the law that worried Badeni. From his perspective, refusal to comply with the law and the massive campaigns of dissent cultivated by the activist speakers risked dramatic and concerning consequences for local societies.
The future proved Badeni’s worries to be well founded. In summer and autumn, a wave of demonstrations and riots broke out across Cisleithania, and meetings, rallies, or associational gatherings stood at the center of a remarkable number of them. Altogether, seventy-eight larger riots and demonstrations took place in the Austrian part of the empire in 1897. According to state authorities, various associations, clubs, and unions participated in nearly half (33) of the cases.Footnote 2 Moreover, the role of such civil society organizations was not limited simply to their presence in street politics, which I define as a complex, historically, socially, and culturally appropriate form of political action taken by “ordinary” people.Footnote 3 Perhaps even more significant was the part these associations played in tacitly organizing or mediating riots and demonstrations. Nearly a third (24) of the recorded instances of street politics were directly preceded by events arranged by local clubs and unions.Footnote 4 Indeed, the active role of civil society organizations in mobilizing protest was not a rarity but rather a crucial factor in creating the Badeni crisis of 1897.
This article explores how, in an effort to create a politically active society, grassroots level associations contributed to the rise of violent unrest in Cisleithanian cities. The first part of this research examines the way permitted or closed room meetings and rallies during the Badeni crisis of 1897 transformed into illegal demonstrations and riots. Analyzing the speeches delivered during the meetings and rallies, this article clarifies the practices and narratives that civil society organizations deployed to elicit protest leading to public disobedience. Additionally, it examines the opportunities they provided for the participants to express their general disgruntlement with political developments in Habsburg Austria by illegally demonstrating and rioting. By highlighting these avenues for unrest, this article shows how the civil society organizations—associations, clubs, unions, and other similar groupings—mobilized the wider population for street politics. I claim they consciously acted as protest brokers—intermediaries between the political leaders and communities of potential protests. Endowed with a relevant amount of local knowledge, trust, and connections, they possessed the means necessary to get the people to the streets.Footnote 5 In these efforts, civil society organizations were often more successful than individual nationalist activists.Footnote 6 The collective actors possessed an authority required to sway like-minded citizens for public action and a sufficient organizing power to induce them to act upon their disgruntlement. Through both their narratives and mobilization efforts, civil society organizations often elicited not only civil disobedience against state authorities, but also violent attacks on members of ethnic minorities. Instead of merely facilitating protest, associations and similar groupings consequently acted as riot brokers. In this article, I examine how and why these organizations provoked uncivil and violent actions against minority populations.
This article contributes to multiple debates—especially to research on the turbulent year 1897. Since many scholars of the late Habsburg Empire branded the crisis of 1897 a turning point for the state, its political aspects remain one of the best-explored topics in the historiography.Footnote 7 Similarly, the language question and nationalism that ostensibly caused the violence, and development of hostile narratives concerning the Badeni ordinances, have received extensive attention from scholars.Footnote 8 Yet, despite their considerable interest in these events, scholars have not given the same attention to the sociopolitical issues at their root. Writing about the riots of 1897 is situated either in the context of broader topics such as antisemitism or student activism, or it is positioned in the setting of events in a single city or a region.Footnote 9 The Badeni riots as a broader issue affecting a large part of (especially Bohemian) society, however, have still not received sufficient attention. My research focuses on the associations and other similar groupings who, though crucial players in many late Habsburg riots, have not been closely examined in scholarship on the riots of 1897. By analyzing this specific actor across the whole region, I contribute not only to the role of associations in this crucial event, but also to the understanding of more general dynamics of protest and rioting in the late Habsburg Empire.
The mobilization of street politics through media and during meetings and rallies also remains an unexplored and enigmatic topic.Footnote 10 Although many researchers draw a direct line between parliamentary events and extra-parliamentary demonstrations and riots,Footnote 11 the actual connection remains elusive. In comparison to the parliamentary political arena, the area in-between, comprised of the activities of politicians in their electoral districts, the agitation of local media, and ventures of civil society organizations, is largely neglected. My study fills this lacuna by analyzing associations not only as transmitters of information into broader society and as creators of mobilizing narratives, but also as enablers of both civil and violent disobedience. Next to the media, I consider the meetings and gatherings as the most important tool that encouraged local societies to engage in public political activities, especially in demonstrations and protests. By analyzing these events, I cast light on the processes of local political mobilization at the end of the nineteenth century and contribute to the debate on the role of violence in modernizing societies.Footnote 12
To further analyze the position of the associations as mediators between the parliamentary political arena and the Habsburg Austrian citizens, this article explores the limits and possibilities of utilizing the political science concept of protest brokers, actors who aided politicians and parties to get people to the streets. However, I do not simply aim to demonstrate its relevance for historiography by applying it to the space of Central Europe in the late nineteenth century. Rather, I seek to develop the approach further, considering how the historiographical research of late Habsburg street politics can contribute to the broader scholarly concept. Specifically, I explore its possible application to more collective actors and more violent types of street politics and demonstrate how protest brokerage functioned in a specific setting of a democratizing state at the end of the nineteenth century.
In this way, the article bridges disciplinary boundaries to address the gap between parliamentary politics and street-level violence. This perspective shifts the interpretation of the 1897 crisis away from the traditional narratives of inevitable nationalist conflict and toward an understanding of political mobilization within an emerging mass political society. In doing so, the article highlights how associations empowered previously marginalized social groups to participate in politics, simultaneously exploring the violent potential embedded in this process. More broadly, it demonstrates how civil society organizations could, at the same time, democratize and destabilize political systems, thus challenging both liberal assumptions about civil society’s positive role and traditional historiographical accounts of Habsburg decline.Footnote 13
Elite-Mobilized Protests and Protest Brokers
The fact that elites frequently desire to form or shape protest in their own interest and, consequently, play an important role in its mobilization, is well established in the social sciences.Footnote 14 Many researchers, however, are unable to explain the process of subnational mobilization on a mesolevel and automatically work with a presumption that the elites invoking a protest will be able to efficiently connect with the street. As a result, the answer to “Why some communities turn to protest to demand change, while other seemingly similar communities do not” is largely omitted.Footnote 15 Yet, this question is relevant for most of the cycles of contention we can find in similar polities.Footnote 16 Persuading locals to take to the streets is not an automatic process. It requires a relevant amount of local knowledge, without which identifying the target group for the mobilization may be difficult. Similarly, gaining the trust of local communities can be a daunting task for elites that are “somewhat removed from those they ask to participate,” since, as elites, they tend to be physically and socioeconomically distanced from them.Footnote 17
To overcome these issues, elites use informal and nonstate intermediaries—protest brokers—to organize protests on their behalf. Despite a long legacy in the studies of different types of political brokerage (especially the electoral one),Footnote 18 the concept of protest brokers—mediators who enable elite actors in their efforts to mobilize a protest—is new and consequently still relatively underdeveloped. Its author is a political scientist Sarah J. Lockwood, who set her research in the space of South Africa.Footnote 19 According to Lockwood, the importance of protest brokers for elites lies in their setting in the regional context, which allows them to mitigate the largest deficits of elite-based mobilization—distrust, lack of credibility, information asymmetries between the different political arenas, and access to local networks.Footnote 20
Protest brokers may have several reasons to engage in such mediation. For some, it is a question of ideology, as they deeply believe in the ideals that the elites promote or in the goals they are trying to achieve. For others, the motivations are much more pragmatic, as they expect communal or personal benefits from the endeavor. Besides financial gains, job opportunities, and access to resources, the most important motivator for the protest brokers in the nineteenth century was the possibility of climbing a ladder in a party or a social hierarchy.Footnote 21 This applies even to the individuals within the collectives, such as associations or clubs, that were crucial politically mobilizing actors in the late nineteenth century Habsburg Empire. For ordinary members, the brokerage could have been motivated by an effort to rise in the ranks of the association itself. The leaders or more prominent representatives, who often held other important functions in the town—and were, for example, local journalists, municipal councilors, and teachers in the national schools—sought an opportunity to make themselves visible within the structures of the ideological spectrum they represented.
As already mentioned, elites (in the case of this research mainly political actors such as parliamentary and diet deputies) can struggle to mobilize a protest in places with a missing protest broker. Footnote 22 However, not even the presence of intermediaries guarantees success. Sometimes, individual nationalist activists were unable to broker street politics, as their networks proved insufficient. As the unrest spread from the parliament at the end of November 1897, for example, a German nationalist activist lawyer Dr. Kutschera tried to provoke a demonstration in the north Bohemian town Dux/Duchcov.Footnote 23 Despite his knowledge of the local context, he lacked the authority as well as a platform to mobilize the citizens of the town. To provoke a response to the parliamentary issues, Kutschera went from pub to pub and persuaded the patrons to join him in a march. However, only between thirty and forty young boys joined him, and the lawyer failed to broker the protest for the German nationalists in the parliament.Footnote 24
The Politický klub národního dělnictva [National Workers’ Political Club] in Nový Bydžov/Neubydžov, a small town in eastern Bohemia, on the other hand, succeeded far better in mobilizing a demonstration. On 1 December its members met for a gathering in their clubhouse in one of the local inns. Following the meeting, the Czech nationalists decided to “accompany the present mayor home.” The escort turned into a large protest march, as the people collectively moved through the town and sang nationalist songs. In this activity, the members of the Politický klub were joined by many other citizens of Nový Bydžov, who possibly felt attracted more by the commotion than by the political ideas the meeting promoted. Following the march, windows in multiple Jewish-owned properties were destroyed.Footnote 25 These two cases indicate not only that the associations were able to address a much wider audience during the meetings and rallies than the individual activists, but they also provided society with an attractive opportunity to take to the streets. For these reasons, collective actors often proved more reliable when brokering the protest for the political leaders.
The Violent Crisis of 1897
Already by the end of the summer of 1897, it was apparent that the year was—and most likely would continue to be—extremely turbulent. Although political campaigning was normal during any general parliamentary elections, the elections for parliament in March 1897 brought an intensification of political debate to the public space.Footnote 26 For the first time, a new fifth voting curia had been enfranchised, consisting mostly of new working class voters. Mobilizing the new electorate was the most important task for the rising mass movements, especially for the Social Democrats. The newly expanded franchise enabled mass parties like the socialists, Christian Socialists, and radical nationalists to enter more fully into the Cisleithanian political arena.Footnote 27 Consequently, the end of 1896 and the beginning of 1897 were marked by a massive number of rallies and meetings, through which both old and new political movements tried to mobilize the recently enfranchised electorate.Footnote 28 This mobilization brought tensions and violence into public space, since in some cases the antagonistic parties sought to disrupt the meetings and rallies of their rivals. This could lead to conflicts and bloody clashes.Footnote 29
Before the tensions could properly settle after the March elections, the cabinet of Prime Minister Badeni stirred the waters again by publishing new language ordinances for Bohemia and Moravia in April. By equalizing Czech and German languages in internal administration, they favored already bilingual Czech officials. In marked contrast, their German-speaking counterparts rarely spoke Czech and would be forced to learn it in a short time of five years.Footnote 30 In June, the outrage that unified the German nationalist parties culminated in an orchestrated obstruction, which paralyzed the Cisleithanian Parliament. After the government dissolved parliament (for the first time in twenty years), politicians—widely supported by the nationalist media—used the opportunity to organize rallies and meetings, during which they mobilized their constituents for or against the disputed ordinances.Footnote 31
In reality, there was little reason for most Cisleithanians to care one way or another. The ordinances impacted a very small part of society—a couple of thousand bureaucrats. Regardless of this limited relevance to society, politicians of both camps took the opportunity to mobilize a noticeable number of people by centering their nationalist discourses around the language ordinances.Footnote 32 This was reflected, for example, in political media. While the German nationalist press described the ordinances as “unjust” and “harmful to all Germans,” the Czech newspapers worked with opposite narratives. They presented Badeni’s effort as the first step toward the true equality of nations in the Habsburg Empire. In these narratives, whole ethnic groups were victims or benefactors of the changes. When the government fell in November, the discursive positions reversed.Footnote 33
Starting in the summer of 1897, thousands of people attended anti-ordinances meetings and rallies organized by German nationalist parties or local activists. The most notable of these was a so-called Volkstag [People’s Day] in Eger/Cheb, which attracted more than 12,000 participants, including over fifty deputies.Footnote 34 As these meetings were happening, several German-speaking majority towns experienced a wave of anti-Czech violence. Very often, Czech media and state administration framed these outbursts as the response of the wider population to the language ordinances, and later historiography adopted this understanding.Footnote 35 The issue of responses of the broader public, however, is far more complex. By raising the levels of frustration in society, political and media discourses encouraged violence in society.
When the Cisleithanian Parliament reconvened in September 1897, the MPs deliberately performed the violence they had fomented over the summer on the streets. Already in September, Badeni challenged one of the loudest German nationalists Karl Hermann Wolf to a duel, during which the prime minister suffered a gunshot wound. Especially in late October and November, fistfights and brawls became everyday phenomena in the parliament. During one of the heated sessions, professor of Prague German University Emil Pfersche unsheathed a knife and, according to Young Czech politicians, tried to stab one of the Young Czech party members. By the end of November, it was clear that the Austrian Parliament was not operational. Progovernment politicians attempted to resolve the stalemate by changing the law governing parliamentary rules. The so-called Lex Falkenhayn allowed the banishment of obstructionists from the house. The following day, police officers entered the chamber and escorted the opposing politicians out. However, the Lex Falkenhayn did not have its intended effect. On the contrary—to protest the police interventions in the parliament, the Social Democrats joined the obstruction as well.Footnote 36
At the same time, the streets of cities with a German-language majority reflected the unrest in parliament and erupted in large demonstrations and riots. The seemingly insoluble political situation, as well as the public ferment, made the emperor accept Badeni’s resignation. As a result, first in Prague and then in the rest of the Czech-majority cities, the largest wave of riots since 1848 broke out. Martial law had to be declared in the Bohemian capital after four days of anti-German and antisemitic violence, and the situation in Bohemia did not completely calm down until mid-December. The shadow of what came to be known as the “Badeni-Krawalle” hung over society for a long time afterward.Footnote 37
Associations and the Riots of 1897
The escalating tensions in parliament, as well as the eruption of violence in cities, aroused excitement throughout society. Many of the nationalist and socialist associations, often connected to the representatives of the political parties, reacted to these events by engaging in fervent activity, organizing hundreds of meetings and rallies throughout Cisleithania to support their representatives in parliament.Footnote 38 Such events, often announced through a combination of billposting, newspaper articles, and informal communication within the community, were attended by thousands of people.Footnote 39 Although the 1890s were the golden age of civil society organization in the Habsburg Empire, the number of people participating in these events still far exceeded the membership bases of the individual associations.Footnote 40
Hidden behind the official justifications for these meetings and rallies, such as the intention to “inform the citizens about the political situation,”Footnote 41 were several other reasons. Most importantly, the goal of the associations was to give voice to the opinion of the wider population about the public affairs in Habsburg Austria. However, “giving voice” to people was not necessarily driven by democratic inclinations. The organizers mainly wanted to demonstrate their strength in society and the universal approval of their position. They also aimed to express support for their parliamentary representatives and present their and society’s opposition to governmental politics. Last but not least, endorsed by the MPs, the associations strove to present themselves as legitimate political actors, intending to raise the pressure on state administration. To achieve such recognition and leverage, they needed to provoke public protest—not only to display the power of the “ordinary” citizens, but also to demonstrate their willingness to enter the Cisleithanian political arena.
The connections between civil society organizations and political parties were diverse. As Carlo Ruzza states in his study of contemporary populism, “[p]olitical organizations of all kinds have traditionally relied on a network of organizations which act as channels between the society and the political system.”Footnote 42 At the end of the nineteenth century, especially the new emerging mass movement parties around the empire leaned on a powerful and distinct system of associations. Some of these associations were founded and led either by parliamentary politicians or parties themselves, functioning de facto as local branches of political parties.Footnote 43 In other cases, the organizers were local nationalist activists. Yet even they were very often in contact with parliamentary representatives. For example, Josef Herold, a lawyer and later mayor of Brüx/Most as well as a deputy for the Free Pan-German Party, was the initiator of the nationalist Deutsches Arbeiterbund [German Workers’ Union] in Brüx, an association that played a significant role in escalating tensions in the city into violent street politics in the summer of 1897. Herold himself was also a leading member of several supraregional self-help associations [Schutzbünde], such as the Bund der Deutschen in Böhmen [Union of Germans in Bohemia] or the Deutscher Schulverein [German School Association], where he met with leading MPs along the radical nationalist spectrum. Although Herold was primarily a regional activist, he was closely connected to nationalist parliamentary politics, which he brought into local society through the German Workers’ Union.Footnote 44
But even associations that were not officially classified as political often acted as mouthpieces for nationalist parties. The gymnast unions Turnerverein [Gymnast Association] and Sokol, nationalist organizations such as the above-mentioned Deutscher Schulverein and Ústřední matice školská [Central School Foundation], the Südmark or the Böhmerwaldbund [League for the Bohemian Woods], and others were a major component in the transformation of nationalism into a mass movement. Their nonpolitical classification also allowed them to mobilize women for these causes.Footnote 45 Led mainly by local activists or members of the municipal council, they mobilized for the nationalist parties as well. Although the connection of these associations to the parties was not always transparent, they were major enablers of local activities of the political movements.
The link between such various types of associations and political parties did not escape the state administration, which carefully monitored their activities. Especially when the associations were connected to radical or nationalist specters, governing bodies tried to control their impact on local societies. For example, the governor of Bohemia, Count Karl Maria Coudenhove, suggested that district captains (Bezirkshauptmänner) in 1897 should closely observe the activities of the Bund der Deutschen in Böhmen, since he considered them closely bound to the nationalist movement around Georg von Schönerer, and potentially dangerous. However, the state administration failed to contain the influence of the Bund: by 1913, it had 1117 local branches with nearly 115,000 members.Footnote 46 A Prague antisemitic association Nový klub lidový [New People’s Club] was similarly regarded as a voice of the most radical clusters on the Czech political spectrum, and was subjected to heavy surveillance from the Prague police directorate.Footnote 47 Surveillance of the activities of these potentially dangerous associations intensified during periods of heightened social tension. In such times, the state tried to restrict the agitation of associations, culminating in the banning of public meetings throughout 1897.Footnote 48 The civil society organizations, however, adapted their strategies and managed to skillfully circumvent the bans or to organize their events illegally.Footnote 49 They often questioned not only the legitimacy but also the legality of state precautions, pointing out the alleged biased behavior of the state toward one of the national groups.Footnote 50 Restricting the activities of the associations and clubs proved to be a daunting task for the administration, which often did so at the cost of worsening their position in the local community.Footnote 51
Attempts to prevent the public activities of associations were also hampered by their widespread presence in street politics. Officials recorded involvement of the civil society organizations in nearly half of the demonstrations and riots.Footnote 52 Especially during the more formally established demonstrative marches in cities with German-speaking majorities, associations were often seen walking in the processions right behind the mayor, members of the municipal council, and other political representatives currently sojourning in the city.Footnote 53 However, even during the more spontaneous (and often illegal) protests, policemen and gendarmes recognized members of civil society organizations who collectively joined the events. Political protest in Karlsbad/Karlovy Vary in 1897 encompassed a broad spectrum of associations. In his report to the Bohemian Governorship, the district captain, Maurig, recalled seeing a stuffed grouse in the crowd, a symbol of the Karlsbader Tischgessellschaft [Karlsbader Table Society]. In the South Bohemian city of Písek/Pisek, multiple members of a local branch of a radical nationalist organization Národní Obrana [National Defense] were even arrested for smashing the windows of fellow Jewish citizens.Footnote 54
Moreover, the role of associations was not limited to the mere participation of their members in demonstrative marches and protests. Associational members in Cisleithanian cities used their influence to elicit or even orchestrate street politics. Attendees, leaving the rooms where the events took place, immediately gathered and proceeded to engage in public protest. Although the participants formed a core of the demonstrators, they were usually joined by other people who had also waited for the end of the meeting.Footnote 55
Particularly in the German-speaking towns, the street politics that followed meetings and rallies often took on a fairly uniform form: they were followed by torchlight marches that included a broad social spectrum of the city’s population, including municipal representatives and MPs who happened to be present in the town.Footnote 56 During the processions, protesters usually visited places connected with nationalist politics and symbolism, such as private houses of the German MPs or memorials to Joseph II. Although the exact names of the organizers of these processions were unknown, the state administration suspected them to be a product of a common effort of the political and cultural associations, who brokered the protests for the local city hall or their parliamentary representatives.Footnote 57
The form of street politics in municipalities with a Czech-speaking majority was not nearly as fixed as in the cities with German-speaking majorities, but the marches shared much in common. Often, they mirrored the German demonstrations, as participants would visit places imbued with national sentiments, as well as the houses of nationalist leaders and activists. Other times, however, the form of the demonstrations that followed the meetings and rallies became chaotic, and they directly escalated into anti-German and antisemitic violence. This would suggest a higher level of spontaneity than the meticulously organized German torchlight marches. In both national communities, however, the civil society organizations’ orchestrating touch on the events was evident to the state governing organs, who tried to encourage the leaders of the associations and clubs to take a more moderate course.Footnote 58
As mentioned earlier, protests often grew directly out of the meetings and rallies. Street politics began right after the events ended, as people left the associations’ rooms, beer halls, gymnastic halls, or other places where a larger number of participants could be accommodated. On 3 December, multiple Czech associations—such as Politický spolek pro Chrudim [Czech Political Association for Chrudim], Dělnický spolek “Havlíček” [Workers’ Association “Havlíček”], and the Jednota občanů [Citizens’ Union]—organized a public meeting with a Young Czech MP Karel Pippich in the Sokol Hall in Chrudim. After the meeting ended, hundreds of attendees, multiplied by people waiting in front of the building for the end of the event, marched through the city. Besides standard singing of the national songs, the marchers were overheard shouting antisemitic slurs and threats. Not long after, some of the participants attacked Jewish-owned stores with stones before finally being dispersed by law enforcement.Footnote 59 Similar forms of street politics in Komotau/Chomutov directly followed the meeting of a constituent assembly of the German nationalist Arbeiterbund [Workers’ Union]. The meeting, attended by about 4000 people, resulted in a small demonstration of about 200, which was nonviolent and followed the traditional form.Footnote 60
These contrasting cases highlight that, despite both demonstrations directly following the association organized events, the form and intensity of street politics could differ dramatically. In Chrudim, a comparatively smaller rally of a couple of 100 mobilized far more citizens immediately after for a violent demonstration. On the other hand, the much larger Komotau meeting did not produce a similar outcome since only a small part of the participants engaged in the subsequent demonstration. Meetings and rallies did not transform directly or linearly into street politics. The successful transformation of such meetings and rallies into illegal demonstrations or riots was contingent on several circumstances, such as the existing condition of social and political relations in the city. Mainly, the explosion of street politics depended on the degree to which local society had been already mobilized prior to and during the specific meeting of the organization. In cities with blossoming nationalist politics, it was seemingly easier to produce street politics. The history of earlier nationalist conflicts, which frequently filled the pages of regional nationalist media, also created a fertile ground for persuading people to take to the streets.Footnote 61
Saaz/Žatec as an Example of Protest Brokerage
Many of the previously described circumstances came together in the North Bohemian Saaz/Žatec, which can serve as an example of the associational landscape and the role of civil society organizations throughout Habsburg Austria. Saaz, a center of hops agriculture, was a city with a dominant German-speaking majority. According to the official data, only 400 of the 16,000 inhabitants were Czech speakers, though the actual number was likely much higher. Due to its agroindustrial character, Saaz was a destination for many seasonal laborers, and some accounts claim that the number of Czech speakers was closer to 2000.Footnote 62 Although the municipal council was predominantly German liberal, the town was also a hub of Schönererian nationalist radicalism in Bohemia.Footnote 63
As was so often the case in Cisleithania, cultural and social life in the city was divided both by language and by class. Its fifty-nine associations attracted thousands of locals. Particularly in the 1890s, local associations underwent a notable radicalization, as a process of internal nationalization gradually eroded the previously strong liberal dominance. Many organizations that had initially been nationally moderate began to flirt with aggressive nationalism and antisemitism. In addition, new radical groupings emerged in the city. One of these was a branch of the Bund der Deutschen in Böhmen, which attracted around 500 members. By 1900, only some of the business and professional associations remained liberal, whereas the only genuinely nationally indifferent clubs were socialist. Although the German civil society organizations in Saaz were livelier and more developed, Czech associational life, led by local schoolteachers and hop traders, mirrored its national counterpart with multiple (8) well-attended organizations that were often a target of German nationalist attacks. Already in the summer of 1897, leading figures of Czech and German nationalist life engaged in several disputes that went beyond the usual skirmishes in the local press and had repercussions for coexistence in the city.Footnote 64
The radicalization and strained relations between nationalists escalated into violent protests at the end of November, with civil society organizations giving impetus for the outbreak. On 26 November, a demonstration of around 400 people followed a meeting of the German radical Deutsche Volksverein in Saaz [German People’s Association in Saaz], personally closely connected with the Bund der Deutschen in Böhmen. The character of the event was clearly political, as the participants expressed their discontent with the governmental politics by chanting “Down with Badeni!” “Down with the government,” and “Pfui!” and singing the nationalist song “Wacht am Rhein” in front of the District Captain von Campe’s personal apartment.Footnote 65 Two days later, the same association organized a large political meeting in the local Schießhaus [Shooting House], with a program promising to deal with “party matters.” However, from the opening of the assembly, it was clear that this topic would not be the main point of discussion. Two thousand citizens of Saaz from the whole German nationalist political spectrum participated. Next to radicals stood both Liberals and their internationalist “archenemies,” the Social Democrats.Footnote 66 After the meeting ended, around 500 participants formed a procession and set out toward the city center. On the way, they made a stop at Emperor Joseph II’s monument and at the town hall, where the crowd yelled anti-government slogans and sang the “Wacht am Rhein” again. The main square was filled, as the audience rose to 3000–4000 people, nearly a fourth of the city’s population. Despite initial conflicts with law enforcement caused by police and gendarmerie efforts to break up the demonstration, the municipal representatives eventually managed to negotiate a peaceful conclusion to this particular case of street politics, and the crowd dispersed after an hour. The mood in society, however, remained tense. Later that night, the largest anti-Czech riots in the whole of Cisleithania erupted, as close to 2000 people demolished and even set several houses around the city on fire.Footnote 67
Further empowered by the specific sociopolitical situation in Saaz, harsh nationalist propaganda, and the history of previous conflicts, the mobilization activities of the civil society organizations had especially violent and uncivil consequences. Despite the lack of concrete evidence, the state administration was convinced of a link between the meetings and the subsequent demonstrations and riots. The connection between civil society organizations and violence in Saaz, however, was not straightforward, and state representatives did not record any explicit calls for protest or riot. Nonetheless, the associational activities facilitated the violent behavior of many of the citizens. Not only had the Volksverein organized rallies and meetings during a period of social tension, but it had also spread particular narratives intended to mobilize participants toward street politics.
Associations Mobilizing Violent Action
We can see how the mobilization process worked when we analyze the meeting and the media surrounding the street politics in Saaz more closely. The invitations to the “Volksversammlung” in Saaz, distributed en masse around the city, had a strongly mobilizing character themselves. Referring to the application of the Lex Falkenhayn in parliament, they read: “We will not let them throw our deputies out on the street!” During the meeting, the speakers—usually journalists, nationalist activists, laborers’ leaders, and businesspeople, representing the broad spectrum of political organizations in the city—worked hard to persuade the attendees of the injustice caused to them by the government and by the Czechs. Needless to say, those present—mainly men, as women were banned from being members of the political associations, and usually only joined the protests following the meetingsFootnote 68—did not need much convincing, as the success of continuous media campaigns in bringing the majority society to the Schießhaus demonstrates. In his speech, Edmund Pummer, a well-connected radical nationalist journalist from Saaz, claimed:
“Regardless of which party you belong to, the violated right must be restored. We will not allow the representatives of thousands of voters to be thrown out of the house of the people, we will not tolerate the hallowed halls of parliament being desecrated by the police, we want freedom, we want justice!”
A leader of one of the socialist associations named Rott followed with similar attacks against the state. Moreover, all of them repeatedly pointed out that what was happening in the parliament was a “breach of the Volksrechte [People’s Law]” and a “Vergewaltigung [rape]” of the German nation in Austria, against which it was necessary to protest.Footnote 69 This way, they symbolically brought the events in the parliamentary political arena into the public space of Saaz in support of the parties they represented.
Throughout the entire meeting, not a single speaker mentioned the necessity of taking direct action against the Czechs in town. Similarly, no orator declared that a public demonstration would follow the meeting. From the point of view of the Cisleithanian state, an exhortation to demonstrate would have crossed a red line. Such a remark would have inevitably led to the dissolution of the event or even the prosecution of the speaker. Most of the speakers operated with an exact understanding of the limits of tolerance of state authorities. The speeches in Saaz and in other cities mobilized people for collective action through a highly strategic discourse. This included three main narrative lines that served to mobilize participants and were easily traceable in the speeches delivered in Saaz.
First, the speakers consciously worked to unify the diverse points on the national political spectrum they represented. Presenting their beliefs as the opinion of the whole group, they systematically blurred the lines between different groups of inhabitants. Whenever they discussed the sociopolitical conflict in Cisleithania, orators presented themselves as the authentic voice of the people: “everyone is filled by the feeling of giving flaming expression to the indignation that fills us at the lawlessness of which the House of Representatives has been the scene in recent days.”Footnote 70 In this way, they aimed to arouse a feeling that the actions which in reality impacted only a small group of people (German-speaking officials), actually had far-reaching consequences for every member of the community.
Simultaneously, the speakers often shifted their line of reasoning from the perspective of the parliamentary representatives to the viewpoint of a regular member of the national communities, and back. They did so mainly by speaking in the nominative plural “we” or accusative “us,” creating linguistic ambiguity as to whether the protagonists of the speech were the deputies or the general public. This way, they depicted obstructionist conflicts in the parliament in a positive light as signs of strength and perseverance:
“Germans in Austria! We persevere and, as long as the forced language ordinances [Sprachenzwangsverordnungen, a negatively charged label for the language ordinances] remain in force, we will continue our resolute resistance to any government. We remain convinced that the German people, who sympathize with us, will understand and continue to approve of this behavior. Even if the struggle demands great and heavy sacrifices, it must finally lead to victory, for governments will pass away, but the German people and their rights will endure forever.”Footnote 71
This was a common discourse during meetings and in the media.Footnote 72 This manifesto, read out by the German Progressive Party member Anton Pergelt, purposely obscured the level on which resistance should take place. Although from a logical perspective, the arena of struggle against the Austrian government was parliamentary–political, the speech addressed all Germans in Austria. Similarly, the speakers did not specify whether it would be the political representatives or the general public who would “sacrifice” themselves for the rights of the German people. Using the metaphor of Jürgen Habermas, they obscured the possibilities and limits of action of the “gallery,” presenting it as another participant in the arena of political conflict.Footnote 73 This ambiguous rhetoric served two purposes: it strove to persuade the listeners that their personal well-being would be influenced by political developments in the empire, and, simultaneously, it aimed to include the broadest strata of society into the national conflict by making them believe they are all “soldiers” in the conflict.
In the second narrative line, the organizers discussed the righteousness of action, examining what was right and wrong in the Cisleithanian political arena. An important part of this narrative persuaded attendees that the other side of the conflict was behaving in an uncivil, unjust fashion. The speakers operated with qualities such as “un/just,” “un/cultural,” or “un/free” to frame different phenomena in a positive or negative way. The German nationalists evoked the notion that Czechs and the “Slavic government” threatened to eliminate the German Volk in Austria. Their narratives revolved mainly around three events—the declaration of the language ordinances, the Egerer Volkstag, and the Lex Falkenhayn. They portrayed these as deliberate attacks on the rights of German citizens in Cisleithania, which should make the “German Volk feel threatened in its rights, its language, and its national property.”Footnote 74 They presented these issues as something that not only targeted a small group of administrators and politicians but also threatened each individual and his Germanness. In his speech in Komotau, Pummer expressed this danger: “Our Germanness will not be taken away from us, we want to remain Germans—those who would want to root out our tribe [Volksstamm zu rütteln] should beware!”Footnote 75 Not only Germans but rather Germandom as the quality was presented as inherently “free,” “of high culture,” and “just.” Czechs and Poles, on the other hand, were presented as “expansive,” “violent,” and “uncultured,” working to “destroy everything that the German Volk once achieved.”Footnote 76
Czech speakers also lambasted the endeavor of Germans to limit their “national rights.”Footnote 77 In comparison to narratives spread by German civil society organizations, they brought up institutional politics less as a mobilizing tool. Although Czech speakers occasionally accused the Germans of trying to violate justice by seeking to repeal the ordinances, they increasingly used emotionally heavier means—especially the perceived German oppression of the Czech minorities—to mobilize their attendees. On 19 August 1897, the Czech radical nationalist association Národní Obrana [National Defense] organized a meeting on Prague’s Žofín. Although parliamentary politics was briefly mentioned, most speakers rather focused on the “raping of the Czechs in the closed territory [uzavřené území, an ironic name for the territories with German-speaking majorities that liberal politics demanded administratively separated in the 1880s].” To give this message proper weight, Národní Obrana even invited a supposed victim of the violence from Brüx, a miner named Tilšar, to recount the situation on the national frontier to the attendees.Footnote 78 Although the nature of violence in Brüx rather resembled youthful brawls,Footnote 79 Tilšar recounted the events in a highly nationalized manner, as a depiction of the oppression of the Czech inhabitants of the city.Footnote 80 In these narratives, they were presented as victims of German brutality and barbarity.Footnote 81
These narratives were designed to evoke a sense of danger in the audience. For Germans, this threat primarily concerned their living standards, while for Czechs, it extended to their physical well-being. Concurrently, these narratives, to a certain extent, dehumanized members of other groups by attributing to them the fundamental characteristics of being “uncultured” or “violent.” In my view, they played an important legitimizing role in later violence against “ordinary” members of the minorities.
During such speeches, the political factions did not simply criticize the political or national opposition. The state and its organs received a lot of negative attention as well. The orators especially lambasted “Staatsgewalt” (in this sense meant as the misuse of state power) in the broadest sense, often pointing out the unfairness with which the state treated civil society organizations, or the people of one nation or political group as opposed to others. Simultaneously, all sides criticized the alleged willingness of state organs to act outside the bounds of the law by limiting the freedom of speech and assembly.Footnote 82 During the large Volkstag in Eger in July 1897, speakers castigated the alleged bullying by the political administration that the Germans had to endure.Footnote 83 The claims of abuse by the state organs made by German nationalists in Eger were compounded by the interventions of supposedly Czech policemen during the subsequent demonstrations. Labeling the state behavior as discriminatory had an important mobilizing and empowering role, as it sought to persuade the attendees that they—as members of the nation/political group—would not find support elsewhere. The participants were led to believe that not even the supposedly neutral state stood on their side.
As speakers formed a negative image of “others,” they also simultaneously created different visions of in/justice, through which they justified the aggressive discourses or even violence committed by the groups they defended. For Czech nationalists, the defense rested mainly on the steps to ensure the equality of both Bohemian nations in the form of the language ordinances, as well as to guarantee the security of the minorities in cities with a German-speaking majority.Footnote 84 German nationalists, on the other hand, saw their acts mainly as protection for the “rights of the German Volk.”Footnote 85 It is unclear what such rights actually consisted of. Often, speakers would promote vague ideas of freedom and progress as part of these rights, claiming Germans were the true protectors of these values in the empire.Footnote 86 Largely, these proclamations were influenced by nationalist chauvinism—progress and freedom were based on a flourishing German culture that Slav backwardness, and its efforts to subjugate the German Volk, endangered. Especially the German speakers additionally justified their actions by stressing their loyalty to the dynasty and obedience to the (often misinterpreted) law. In the second case, this rarely ever translated into street politics.Footnote 87
The third narrative combined the first two to emphasize the necessity to act against the alleged injustice. In this line, the first (the “we” narrative) added to the second (the supposed inability to rely on the state) to form a potent combination. Some of the milder speeches merely called upon the attendees to “unite” and stand up for their national rights or to “take responsibility into their own hands because their interests were at stake.”Footnote 88 Although these appeals had a certain mobilizing character, the watchful police representatives mostly tolerated them. Despite the empowerment of civic action, the exact nature of the deeds called for by these narratives was unclear and could not be seen as inciting violence. This was not always the case. Especially when the speakers were not professional politicians, speeches often crossed the strategic line of what the administration was willing to tolerate. Sometimes, members of civil society organizations or speakers openly threatened or called for direct violent action. For example, the abovementioned miner Tilšar, the representative of the minority in Brüx, claimed: “When injustice is done to us, we will also do injustice.” Similarly, during the Kreisturnerfest [Regional Gymnastics Festival] in Reichenberg/Liberec, municipal councilor Jendel pointed out that “Reichenberg would never allow itself to be ‘Czechisized’ and, if necessary, will oppose the efforts with manly violence [Gewalt].” Such appeals were considered socially dangerous and illegal, as they openly called for violent vendetta and popular justice. At that moment, the police representatives usually reacted by threatening to dissolve the meeting.Footnote 89
The effectiveness of these narratives was evident already during some of the sessions. The district captain in Reichenberg noted that after the speeches given during a political meeting held by the German Nationalists and Social Democrats on 28 November 1897, the audience was heard shouting: “People’s justice must be exercised,” before marching to the city to demonstrate and vandalize Czech-owned buildings.Footnote 90 Combined with other informal forms of organizing such as casual conversations among the participants during the events, these narratives mobilized the attendees for demonstrations and riots. Although official sources are mostly silent regarding the exchange of information among individuals, they probably played an important role, since the attendees may well have discussed the details of upcoming street politics.Footnote 91
To broker a protest, the combination of these narrative tropes in speeches, songs, and oaths was a crucial tool, as it mobilized participants at the meetings and rallies to demonstrate and riot. The main intention of the speakers was to activate the electorate politically to further support the parties/nations the speakers represented. At the same time, the blend of forming a sense of community, scaremongering, and empowering all appealed to the attendees’ emotions in a way that encouraged them to take a public stance against their presumed oppressors. Civil disobedience in the form of an illegal demonstration or protest was clearly desirable and, as Pummer declared in his writings, the expected outcome for civil society organizations: “There was a swelter of a storm in the air! There was a desire to demonstrate […]. To demonstrate against the rape of our MPs who were in opposition to reason- and law-defying police violence.”Footnote 92
The goal was not only to make a political statement but also to challenge state power. Especially after the Volkstag in Eger, German politicians used every opportunity to put state officials into a stressful position of having to face demonstrators. Often, parliamentary deputies cited the violent missteps made by law enforcement and administrators to criticize the government, as well as to further support narratives about state discrimination that had been disseminated during the meetings and rallies.Footnote 93 As the following section will show, this criticism contributed to the outbreak of clashes with representatives of the state.
Mobilizing Violence: Protest Brokers into Riot Brokers
As already indicated, peaceful protests were not the only result of the brokering activities of civil society organizations. The dynamics following meetings often progressed from peaceful protests to minor or even major outbreaks of violence. This was by no means a rare phenomenon—fifteen of the previously mentioned twenty-four protests preceded by meetings ultimately escalated into violence. As the associations and similar groups mobilized demonstrations, they simultaneously elicited uncivil unrest and other violent acts. In light of the role these organizations had in turning demonstrations into aggressive confrontations or even riots, I argue that they distinctly contributed to the escalation of violence in the late nineteenth century.
In some cases, it was a fully conscious action—particularly when it came to interactions with state organs. After the Volkstag in Eger in July 1897, politicians realized the advantages that could be gained by provoking a conflict with the state administration and law enforcement to promote the alleged injustices done by the state to the Germans. Consequently, they not only disseminated narratives criticizing these bodies but also led their followers into a situation with a high risk of conflict. During the Volkstag in Asch/Aš, for example, speakers lambasted the allegedly tendentious state administrators, as well as “Czech” gendarmerie reinforcements. On the same day, multiple participants assaulted another person, whom they believed to be a governmental informer, as well as two officials who tried to protect him. Influenced by false rumors of bloody clashes between the gendarmes and citizens of Asch, the attendants also attacked law enforcers. Multiple people on both sides of the conflict were injured.Footnote 94 Later, nationalist politicians used these clashes to further feed narratives about the biased behavior of the state to mobilize other street politics.
The violence, however, was often not limited to law enforcement or representatives of the state. Rather than general civil disobedience, civil society organizations elicited an exclusionary and violent reaction from their participants, who targeted property belonging to ethnic or national minorities. In addition to political acts and demonstrations, the meetings and rallies were often followed by demolition or looting of houses of innocent Czech- or German-speaking citizens. Praise for politicians and antigovernment chants such as “Down with Badeni” were replaced with calls for violence and shouts of, “Beat the Jews, kill those bastards!” or “Gone with the Czech dogs!”Footnote 95 Parliamentary and party politics, initially put at the center of the public opposition, was suddenly pushed to the background.
Civil society organizations contributed to the outbreak of such violence by nurturing the conditions in which it could manifest. The ways through which associations mobilized protests just as easily facilitated the eruption of violence against minorities in the tense atmosphere of 1897. Brokerage mechanisms, including uncompromising and dehumanizing narratives, mobilization techniques, and organizational platforms, created momentum that generated ethnic violence. The speakers during associational meetings—similar to the state organs—operated with knowledge of the possible dangerous consequences that such mobilization of street politics could have. Being aware of that, they further reinforced this conflict-driven dynamic by initiating protests that provided participants with opportunities to act.
Crucially, associations also strategically receded into the background as organizers to avoid conflicts with the state, as the escalation of street politics into violence could, technically, have dire consequences for the instigators. Associations and clubs occasionally faced repercussions, as they were the subject of investigations that could result in their disbandment.Footnote 96 Similarly, riots could also have problematic consequences for the political parties for whom the civil society organizations brokered the protest and who ideologically or factually shielded them. In the parliament and diets, violence offered the opposition an easy opportunity to criticize the suspected instigators, and thus the party they believed was behind them.Footnote 97 In practice, however, actual negative consequences were rare. It was seldom possible to prove that violence had been instigated or carried out by the association as a whole rather than by its individual members. Nevertheless, dissolutions did occasionally occur. For example, the Národní Obrana was banned after the Prague riots, despite the fact that the police found no concrete evidence linking the association itself to the organization of the unrest.Footnote 98 The majority of riot brokers, however, escaped any real punishment.
Most of the associations nevertheless sought to draw as little attention to themselves as possible. To avoid potential trouble with the authorities, organizers and speakers allowed the protests they ignited to run their course. As a result, the dynamics of street politics escaped their control. This way, the civil society organizations enabled—or at least permitted—the transformation of often peaceful political demonstrations and protests into preindustrial forms of street politics, such as not only petty destruction of property but also riots and violence bordering on pogrom.Footnote 99 Consequently, the civil society organizations were an important player in causing the ethnic-based violence during the Badeni crisis, and, whether actively or passively, operated as riot brokers, actors mediating uncivil actions.
Conclusion
Applying the concept of protest brokers used mainly by political scientists, this article reveals associations as crucial players in the process of forming public actions in late Habsburg Austria. Supported by the media, they facilitated eruptions of street politics and violence in Cisleithanian cities by acting as intermediaries between the parliamentary political arena and the streets. Specifically, they did so by disseminating narratives that promoted aggressive actions against members of minorities, and by providing an opportunity to act upon them. In his work about activism on Habsburg language frontiers, Pieter Judson demonstrated how activists worked to develop hostile national relations to make differences in local society visible.Footnote 100 This article follows his argument and claims that associations were crucial players in creating the social rift. By acting as brokers for political parties, they empowered people to take a public stance and personally ensure that what they perceived to be justice would be carried out. Such justice was highly subjective and often opposite to the notions promoted by the other ethnic or political groups. Consequently, when civil society organizations encouraged a broad strata of people who, before 1897, were officially not allowed to participate in parliamentary politics, to take political action, this empowerment also carried a violent potential.
Presenting the wider population as a legitimate party-political actor and calling upon the attendees to fight against parliamentary–political issues and processes such as the language ordinances, meetings and rallies in small cities often indirectly provoked attacks on minorities. Politicians and associational brokers promoted the necessity to act precisely for people who, in the short term, were not able to take effective and immediate steps to correct perceived injustices. Supported and legitimized by months and years of nationalist propaganda in the media, the narratives of civil society organizations led to a search for weak and self-evident proxy targets—such as the homes, businesses, and property of minorities. Most importantly, by transforming the meetings and rallies into demonstrations, the associations and other groups offered the attendees a platform from which to enact their disgruntlement. Such protest brokering consequently often turned violent, as political protests lost their specific focus on the language ordinances. Instead, opportunistic or senseless destructive violence prevailed, with associations brokering not only political demonstrations but also riots.
Associations and other similar organizations that acted as protest brokers were, therefore, ambiguous actors. Voicing the appeals of the political parties to take a stance against perceived injustices or political development within the empire, associations contributed to the increasing participation of the public in the political development of the state. On the other hand, they—often acting as riot brokers rather than protest brokers—simultaneously fueled ethnic-based violence in Habsburg Austria. Aggression of this kind became an inherent part of a modernizing civil society around 1900.Footnote 101 This new possibility of participation led to the formation of parties and movements that deployed exclusionary narratives and violence as a tool to achieve political goals.
When on the same side, politicians and their media did not condemn such violent acts but rather legitimated and sanctioned them. Even in the first days of the riots in Prague, the Czech press celebrated the destruction of the German and Jewish property as a rightful and fair “punitive expedition.”Footnote 102 On 1 December, two days into the Prague riots, Národní listy still supported the street politics, and justified the violence against the innocent population by pointing out alleged German provocations.Footnote 103 Such defense of deeds that the Habsburg state considered unacceptable resulted in an increasing acceptance of violence as a legitimate tool for political action in the late nineteenth century. Even Social Democrats, who promoted many values highly regarded in today’s liberal democracies—such as general suffrage and peaceful cohabitation between different ethnic groups—took extremist steps against political and class opponents. Although Social Democrats promoted national coexistence, it was not a peace they strove for. During their so-called Manifestation of Peace, a demonstration against the nationalist violence at the beginning of September 1897, Socialist MP Josef Steiner mentioned the necessity of transforming the national conflict into a class conflict: “Therefore, fight! Peace to the nations, but a permanent fight against the exploiters and oppressors […].”Footnote 104 These were not just idle words. The violent dismantling of the meetings of political opponents by Social Democratic associations was one of the weapons frequently used by the party and one of the greatest causes of the outbreak of the Graz riots in November 1897.Footnote 105 Yet both Social Democrats and nationalist parties would deem themselves “just” and “cultured,” even as they considered the violence—when aimed in the “right” direction—a legitimate tool to achieve their political goals. Moreover, they also presented this view to their supporters during meetings and rallies.
Analyzing the activities of civil society organizations in 1897, this article thus makes two main contributions to the previous scholarship. First, it advances the primarily political-science-oriented research on protest mobilization. Applying Sarah J. Lockwood’s concept of protest brokers to the democratizing society of the late nineteenth century, I develop it further by incorporating collective actors—namely, associations—while situating them in the historical realities of that period. In doing so, I demonstrate how such organizations helped overcome obstacles that individual activists would have otherwise faced, such as limited personal authority or difficulty reaching target groups for mobilization. At the same time, I also highlight the darker side of protest brokering, which, in a tense social atmosphere and a politically or ethnically polarized local context, has the potential to lead to violent consequences. Protest brokers can thus transform into riot brokers, functioning simultaneously as a constructive force for a society’s democratization and a destabilizing power within the political system.
Second, this article expands the understanding of the historiography of the late Habsburg Empire. It demonstrates that the Badeni crisis, often seen as a proof of the fundamental impossibility of cohabitation of the nationalities in the fin de siècle state,Footnote 106 needs to be reconsidered. The political mobilization, not the nationalist or social differences by themselves, created and supported violence in Cisleithania. From this perspective, the riots of 1897 should be seen as a result of the development of a politically engaged mass society rather than a phenomenon stemming from a specific late Habsburg ethnonational setting.Footnote 107 Radical groups, such as the Czech National Socialist Party (established in 1897), contributed to the recurrence of mass violence in Cisleithania until 1914. After the Badeni riots, unrest instigated by organizations and clubs frequently returned and was an important part of the large riots in Prague in 1904 and 1908.Footnote 108 At the same time, however, the violence in Bohemia always remained event driven and situationalFootnote 109 and the state of affairs in Habsburg Austria never escalated into a “civil war,” as John W. Boyer labeled the nationalist conflict in Bohemia.Footnote 110
Acknowledgments
This article benefited considerably from the insightful readings and valuable comments of Peter Becker and Pieter Judson, as well as from two anonymous reviewers. I also thank Jan Bouška and Natalia Dziadyk for their further help, as well as the editors of the Austrian History Yearbook. Funded within the DOC program of the OeAW.
Open access
