Teaching the Empire

In the second half of the nineteenth century, school officials in Habsburg Austria designed and implemented a robust system of civic education in elementary and secondary schools. This system was intended to make students become patriotic citizens and to help them develop an attachment to the multinational Habsburg state. The officials attempted to accomplish these goals in a way that constructively utilized existing national and regional identities, hoping these identities could strengthen, rather than diminish, the cohesion of Austria. Instead of attempting to forge an Austrian national identity, Austrian civic education promoted a layered identity that allowed for ethnic, national, and regional identities to exist within an imperial, supranational, Austrian framework. This layered identity was unique and represented an alternative to models of civic education that relied on language, culture, and nationality to serve as the primary unifying force within a state.

Civic education, a state’s effort to develop the loyalty of its citizens, prepare them to operate in political and civil society, and shape the way they regard their government, became a vital component of the public school curriculum in Europe and the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. On a basic level, civic education in public school taught children how their state operated, how their government was organized, and their rights and obligations as citizens. Civic education also helped to articulate the common myths, heroes, and ideas that could bind a society together. It helped children think of themselves as members of the community of the state. In Austria- Hungary, the Habsburg dynasty served as the strongest connective thread binding its diverse lands and peoples, making Austrian identity an imperial identity. This dynastic union also meant that Austrian identity was supranational in nature. An individual was Austrian because he or she lived in the Habsburg Monarchy, not because he or she belonged to a specific national, ethnic, or linguistic group. As a result, Austrian identity was inclusive, rather than exclusive, and could be embraced by everyone within the Monarchy’s borders.