A Habsburg Birodalom a nacionalizmus kihívásai között (1848–1849)
The Habsburg Empire amid the challenges of nationalism. Plans and conceptions for remodelling the Empire (1848-1849)

Summary/Abstract: The Habsburg Empire before 1848 was an exemplar of old-type, dynastic empires. While the nationstate was becoming the increasingly accepted organizing principle of states, the Empire remained a conglomerate of pepoples. The revolutionary and national movements of 1848-1849, in addition to triggering a crisis of the imperial government, threatened the very existence of the Empire since they erupted with unprecedented force, striving, in the name of modern nationalism, to make the priciple of nationality the basis, or at least one of the decisive tenets, of political organization, and demanding the reform of the organization of the Empire. The paper surveys the programs drawn up in Austria in 1848-1849 and attempts to present the Hungarian revolution and war of independence of 1848-49 not only as a duel between the imperial government and the Habsburg court on the one hand, and the Hungarian liberal political elite on the other, but as embedded in the complicated matrix of the programs of the nations that made up the Empire. Savage pamphlets were written, still in the name of constitutionality in 1848-1849, by proponents of imperial centralism, the adherents of assorted types of federal reorganization, and the representatives of the plan of a Hungarian personal union against each other; the real emphasis for these pamphlets was of course provided by the actual battles fought against Hungary. The paper offers a summary of these polemies.

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