Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation? The Archival Heritage of the Habsburgs in
East Central Europe
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Citation to Publisher Version: Niessen, James P. (2007). Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation? The Archival Heritage of the
Habsburgs in East Central Europe. Ab Imperio 2007(3), 265-290.
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Ab Imperio, 312007
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Jim NIESSEN
RECORDS OF EMPIRE, MONARCHY, OR NATION?
THE ARCHIVAL HERITAGE OF THE HABSBURGS
IN EAST CENTRAL EUROPE"
Germany, Austria, and greater (pre- 1918) Hungary existed for centuries
in a relationship that we may call imperial: they were held or brought into
connection by various dynasties' ambitions. In the modem era, however,
this ambition took on a new, national light as subject peoples asserted their
rights. Hungarians led the way in contesting Habsburg absolutist rule in
Hungary, inspiring in turn the self-emancipation of its peoples who came to
see Hungary itself as a multinational empire.
In speaking of imperial archives in the region between the Alps and the
Carpathians one must immediately define terms. For most of the modem
era this region was not an empire at all, if by that we mean that its ruler
exercised authority over the entire region by virtue of the title of emperor.
Until 1806 the head of the Habsburg house was Holy Roman Emperor, but
I would like to thank the forum's editors for their encouraging comments on the initial
text, and Al's anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions as well as valuable information and his own recent articles provided by Imre Ress. In addition to the sources I cite
below, my knowledge of the subject derives from years of research in the archives of the
former Habsburg region and the preparation of two archival studles on Hungary (coauthored by Ress) and Romania for the volume edited by Charles W. Ingrao, A Guide to
East-Central Archives. Minneapolis, 1998 (=Austrian History Yearbook. 1998. Vol. 29.
Pt. 2). Pp. 43-8 1 and 105-121.
*
J. Niessen, Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation?
most of this empire was to the west and north of our region in what we
would today call Germany proper. As we will see, this empire had archives
that would come under the administration of its Austrian successor state.
After 1804 there arose an Emperor of Austria with formal title over the
entire intrarnontane region, but then after 1867 this emperor's realm was
merely the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy west of the Leitha River,
Cisleithania or "the kingdoms and lands represented in the imperial council." The individual lands had their own systems of government ("constitutions"), ruling classes, and archives that we might call royal or provincial
rather than imperial. Legally Hungary was a kingdom, only rarely and colloquially using the term Hungarian empire (magyar birodalorn) for its own
assemblage of crown lands.
So much for formal titles. The historian of political ideas and movements still speaks, as did contemporaries, of the old German empire or of
the Austrian imperial idea or simply "Austrian idea," the latter two concepts meaning an aspiration to establish a uniform system of rule over the
lands in personal union with the Habsburg dynasty - or more idealistically
to propagate a dominant ethos that would cement the ties of the subject
peopIes to the ruling house or at least make their coexistence within a common state seem more desirable than its dissolution. The goal of Austrian
political uniformity within a greater Germany or Austrian empire had only
evanescent success, but the later ideal gained supporters not only among
civil servants but also increasingly among historians. Like everywhere, the
first imperial archives arose here out of the rulers' efforts to buttress their
claims. We will see that they later became workshops for historical research
in the modern sense, open not only to adherents of the Austrian idea but
also to apostles of the incipient national states.
The meaning of archives is also less than obvious. In the simplest sense
they are buildings or repositories for records or documents. Archival professionals then distinguish them from office files by the requirement that
archives must be organized and staffed to facilitate access and research by
outsiders. Finally, archives are distinguished from manuscripls as constituting the product of the normal activity of an organized institution. Modern archival theory expresses a preference for the preservation of original
order and institutional integrity of archives (respect de fonds, the principle
of original order or provenance) rather than the thematic arrangement of
records of varying provenance.' The purposeful assemblage and arrange-
' James M. O'Toole. Understanding Manuscripts and Archives. Chicago, 1990. Pp. 5558; LevCltari ~smeretekkkzikonyve. Budapest, 1980. Pp. 220-225.
266
Ab Imperio, 312007
ment of archives was often practiced by archivists in the eighteenth and
nineteenth century, but by the eve of World War I provenance had officially
become the dominant principle in the archives of Austria-Hungary. Today
archivists see original order as an important aspect of archives' value for
research. This theoretical distinction had dramatic implications for Habsburg archives in the modern era.
Archives of Empire
The fundamental raison d'ttre of medieval and early modern archives
was the assertion of rights of succession, ownership, and rule. For centuries
the monasteries were the chief repositories of these charters or privileges,
followed by the royal treasuries, noble landowners, and city halls. The seminal event in the prehistory of modern Austrian archives was the effort of
Emperor Maximilian (ruled 1493- 15 19) to consolidate his far-flung domains and dynastic marriages through governmental reform and propaganda. His ambition to create an imperial archive at his court in Innsbruck
failed, but he did manage to centralize the preservation of Tyrolean records
there as well as to enlist documents for somewhat fanciful accounts of his
personal exploits and descent from the emperors of Rome. His grandson
and successor as Austrian archduke, Ferdinand I, took time out from the
contest for Habsburg dominance in Germany and Hungary to order that an
official named Wilhelm Putsch collect and create an inventory for the archives in Innsbruck and Vienna. Ferdinand and his successors had recourse
to these archives for official purpose^.^
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not conducive to the centralization and ordering of records. Not only did the Protestant states in
Germany, the Ottoman Turks, and Christian dynastic rivals in Hungary
contest the dominance of the senior Habsburg, but within Austria in its
narrower sense the junior lines of the ruling family also insisted upon their
separate courts and archives. Bohemia and Moravia at least recognized
Habsburg kingship, but their estates and diets maintained separate laws and
institutions. The Peace of Westphalia at the end of the Thirty Years War
Walter Goldinger. Geschichte des iisterreichischen Archivwesens. WienEIorn, 1957;
Mitteilungen des Osterreichischen Staatsarchivs. Erganzungsband 5. S. 11- 13. The most
thorough histories of the three central Austrian archives are the introductory studies to
their published inventories: Ludwig Bittner, Lothar Gross, and Fritz Reinohl. Gesamtinventar des Wiener Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, aufgebaut auf der Geschichte des Archivs und seiner Bestande. Bd. 1-5. Wien, 1936-1940; Inventar des Kriegsarchivs Wien.
Bd. 1-2. Wien, 1953; and Inventar des Wiener Hofiammerarchivs Wien, 195 1.
J. Niessen, Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation?
forced the emperor to renounce his most ambitious pretensions in Germany
and seek consolidation of power in his hereditary lands as an alternative.
The crackdown on Bohemian-Moravian separatism after the Battle of White
Mountain in 1618, the reunification of Habsburg Austrian lands in 1665,
then the repulse of the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 and ensuing reconquest of Hungary opened the way to this consolidation.
The eighteenth century was the birth hour of Austrian imperial statehood. The foundation of the new state and its first imperial archives was the
series of brilliant military victories by Prince Eugen of Savoy. To organize
access to the records of his Court War Council (Hofkriegsrat) since the
time of its creation in 1556 and provide access to maps and reports of his
marshals' campaigns in Germany, Italy, and the Balkans, he founded the
predecessor of the War Archives (Archivum bellicum: Hofkriegsratliches
Archiv) in 1711. It was not only a repository of records for officialdom and
soldiers, but a place for historical research and writing: the archive was
required to produce campaign histories that would draw lessons for future
operations. The most important imperial archive was founded later: the
secret house archives, later named Archive of House, Court, and State
( H ~ L L sHof- , und Staatsarchiv, henceforth in this article: HHSA) arose in
1749, in the aftermath of the bitter War of Austrian Succession when the
importance of rapid access to documentation became painfully clear. The
tightly organized Prussian state had embarrassed Austria and deprived it of
its lucrative Lower Silesian possessions; Empress Maria Theresa drew the
conclusion that the defense of dynastic rights required not only the documentation of these rights but also centralized tax collecting and regulation
of land tenure to support a standing army, with a corresponding increase in
administration and record keeping. The empress sent an official named
Theodor Anton Taulow von Rosenthal (1702-1779) to Prague, Graz, and
Innsbruck to collect older documents. As the administration grew, court
chanceries emerged as arms of the imperial government, with regional competence but residing in Vienna and depositing their archives in the HHSA.
The third component of the imperial archives was the Court Chamber Archives (Hofiammerarchiv),whose parent body arose in 1578 to preserve
financial records, but grew rapidly after the financial reforms of 1749. Here
the focus was on land records and labor services, loans and bonds, taxes
and revenue.) The central archives would serve later to document the AustriAustrian History Yearbook (vols. 6-7, 1970-1971) has articles on the history and holdings of the three imperial archives: Rudolph Neck. The Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv: Its
History, Holdings, and Use. Pp. 3-16; Hanns Leo Mikoletzky. The Finanz- and Hofkam-
j
268
Ab Zmperio, 312007
an occupation of Bucovina and Galicia in 1775-95, but the archives of
Austrian provincial administration remained in Chernivtsy and Lviv respectively, and survive today in Ukraine.
Below the level of the three imperial archives, Austrian administrative
reform had a decisive impact on record keeping outside Vienna. Beginning
in 1756 a series of regulations directed offices to record all incoming correspondence and associated records under a unique number in annual register
books. This innovation, called Nova Mnnipulntio, broke with the earlier
practice whereby offices often separated material according to subject matter, and as a result greatly facilitated the coherency and integrity of the
historical record. Registers, often supplemented by protocol books, made it
more likely that records of an office stayed together. The progressive spread
of Nova Manip~~latio
to lower state bodies, churches, and other organizations throughout the Habsburg realm created a remarkable web of records
whose relationship is signaled by the ever-present register numbers that
identify not only that document but its antecedents and later documents
(Vor- und Nachakten) and correspondence with other offices. With the help
of this numerical web it is often possible to track information that was thought
lost by consulting secondary and tertiary archives that may exist today in a
variety of countrie~.~
It is important to distinguish the origins and organizational principles of
the three central archives. The Kriegsarchiv and HoJlcammerarchiv were
classical organizational or ministerial archives, arising from the operations
of more or less coherent, functional agencies and possessing from the beginning long, nearly complete series of administrative records. For many
years this could not be said of the HHSA. The original instructions to Taulow von Rosenthal, which guided his successors for over a century, defined
its mission as the collection in one place of individual documents of importance for the defense of the rights of the imperial house and the governance
of its states as a whole. The HHSA was to seek out these documents wherever it found them, in isolation from if not together with the other records
-
merarchiv. Pp. 22-38; and Rainer Egger. The Kriegsarchiv. Pp. 39-66. There is also a
history of the HHSA in Arthur J. May. Austria N Daniel H. Thomas and Lynn M. Case.
Guide to the Diplomatic Archives of Western Europe. Philadelphia, 1959. Pp. 3-20.
LevCltari ismeretek kkzikonyve. Pp. 161-164, traces the origin and philosophy of Nova
Munip~tlatio.I experienced its benefit for researchers while consulting Austrian, Hungarian, and Romanian archives in the course of research for my doctoral dissertation on
Transylvania in the 1860s: Battling Bishops: Religion and Politics in Transylvania on
the Eve of the "Ausgleich" 1Ph.D. Dissertation; Bloornington: Indiana University, 1989.
269
J. Niessen, Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation?
'
of the agency that created or received them. The HHSA (like many other
central archives of this era) arranged its oldest charters and privileges in a
single chronological collection. It sometimes passed up the opportunity to
acquire old archives because they were unimportant for dynastic interests
or imperial governance, or traded records that fell outside these criteria for
other archives that did. The HHSA also acquired series of organizational
records like those of the medieval kings, and such series became preponderant with the passage of time as the records of the chanceries and foreign
office came into the archives. On the other hand there were record series of
the utmost central importance, like those of the Council of State and the
chancery of the ruler, which it acquired only after 1900 because the central
government chose not to relinquish direct control over them.5
The three central archives were essentially repositories for the use of the
state itself. Yet, because the HHSA dealt with the most far-reaching issues
and was the wealthiest in older material, it quickly attracted outside researchers and granted them access. The permission for use by outsiders
was always conditioned by the interest of the state, and denied if the researcher sought access to information that might be injurious to that interest. According to statute, permission depended upon the foreign minister
himself, could only be granted for individual documents identified in advance, and all documents had to be examined for dangerous content and
withheld if it was found. In practice, these rules were waived in individual
cases. Leopold von Ranke (1795-1896) made very extensive use of the
HHSA for his sixteenth century histories after a favorable interview with
Prince Metternich in 1827 caused the chancellor to waive the rule against
the provision of entire fascicles (bundles) of records. Despite his opposition to contemporary liberal movements, Metternich contributed to the emergence of the HHSA as a center for historical research. The director and historian Chmel, who himself played a direct role in this trend, wrote with some
exaggeration in 1849: "His Excellency State Chancellor Prince Metternich
granted access in the most liberal manner, indeed on his orders many archival officials became practically the assistants of the researcher^."^
In an 1868 letter to the director, Ranke praised the HHSA as the most
important archive for German history CfLir die decttsche Historie), by which
Ludwig Bittner's history of the HHSA in vol. 1 of Gesarntinventar has this collecting
practice and the frequent neglect of original order as a central theme. As we will see,
respect de fonds was crucial for the disputes concerning the control of archives after
World War I in which he was directly involved.
Bittner. Bd. 1. S. 169".
270
Ab Imperio, 3/2007
he meant the history of the old German empire, not Austria in the narrow
sense. After 1806 the HHSA acquired the records of the defunct Holy Roman Empire and Venetia, which were a great attraction for Ranke whose
lasting contribution to historiography was his insistence on the value of
archives for research. Beginning in the 1820s he had been one of the handful of researchers who enjoyed regular access to the HHSA. The archive
was proud of his 1868 letter, including it in its public exhibition for decades. But even he was denied research access in 1863 - to the correspondence of Chancellor Kaunitz with his Paris ambassador in 1756-7. Presumably the Austrian Foreign Minister feared the repercussions for Austria's
image in Germany of "fresh" revelations about Austria's anti-Prussian coalition a century earlier.' The Austro-Prussian contest for leadership in
Germany was settled three years later at the Battle of Koniggratz/Sidova.
The limitations on access that Ranke and many other researchers experienced in the HHSA make it ironic that the absolutist state afforded the
dramatist Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872), who was frustrated in his literary
career by bouts with censorship and was also no admirer of ChanceIIor
Metternich, the directorship of the Hoj7cammerarchiv in 1832, which he
held until his retirement in 1856. Even if his literary career was more important to him, we can conclude from a report he wrote in 1840 that he took
some pride in his archival work:'"the mission of the archives is to illuminate matters that it is permitted even the most experienced official not to
know."8 Archivists were civil servants (Beamten) who provided research
service for their parent ministry. But several of Grillparzer's memoranda
reveal a non-bureaucratic, indeed prescient appreciation of original order
when he rejected proposals by the HHSA that some of his archive's records
be ceded to the latter, writing: "I would find it completely unscholarly and
destructive of all historical value were two archives placed in the possession of unrelated fragments, isolated rarities through renewed dismemberment of this interesting colle~tion."~
He was mindful of the fragile state of
'Leopold Auer. Das Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv und die Geschichtswissenschaft. Zum
250-jahrigen Jubilaum seiner Griindung 11 Mitteilungen des Osterreichischen Staatsarchivs. 2000. Bd. 48. S. 66; Bittner. S. 163"-170".
Goldinger. S. 23.
Gottfried Mraz. Franz Grillparzer - Finanzbeamter und Archivdirektor / I Franz Grillparzer. Finanzbeamter und Archivdirektor: Festschrift zum 200. Geburtstag. Berwang,
1991. S. 74. According to Mraz, "Grillparzer wurde wider Erwarten ein sehr guter Archivdirektor" (S. 73). On his archival career see also Hanns Leo Mikoletzky. Der Archivdirektor Franz Grillparzer (anlal3lich der Wiederkehr seines 80. Todestages) I/ Der
Archivar. 1952. Bd. 5. S. 49-54.
27 1
J. Niessen, Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation?
Austrian statehood; perhaps the most famous verse about Austria in 1848
came from his pen, a tribute to Field Marshal Radetzky's victory over
Italian troops: "In your camp is Austria / we others are individual fragments."1° We can read the poem as a confession of Austria's weakness,
or as a declaration in favor of despotism over national particularities.
Grillparzer was a critic of contemporary nationalism and saw the dynasty, whatever the flaws of individual rulers and officials, as the guarantor of the unity of the state.
The years after the revolution put the old archival regime to the test.
During the decade of absolutism the dominant Austrian minister was no
longer the foreign minister but the minister of interior, Alexander Bach.
This champion of centralism and the suppression of local autonomy sought
unsuccessfully to bring the central archives of the Austrian Empire together
in one building. The Imperial Archives (Reichsarchiv)would be one of the
monumental new buildings on the RingstraBe." With the suppression of the
Hungarian Court Chancery and its constitutional successor, imperial authorities sought in 1858 to issue a special interdiction against the removal of
records from the Chancery records, and by extension any archives at a11.I2
As late as 1860, HHSA director Erb would write that the HHSA should be
"a well-organized arsenal of weapons for [the monarch's] struggle for his
historical and political rights" (ein moglichst wohlgeordnetes Arsenal fiir
die WafSen zum historisch-staatsrechtlichen Kampfe).I3
Archives of Monarchy
The Compromise laws of 1867-68 brought an end to the crisis with
Hungary and introduced liberal constitutions in the two halves of the new
Dual Monarchy. Hungarian resistance to the imperial vision of Bach and
Emperor Franz Joseph led to a double renunciation of imperial rule in Hungary and of absolutism in Austria. Despite its imperial ambitions the Habsburg realm had already contained elements of dualism and indeed multipolarity. Now, these elements combined with constitutionalism to give birth
'O "In deinem Lager ist Osterreich, / wir Andre sind einzelne Triimmer / Aus Torheit und
Eitelheit / sind wir zerfallen / Die Gott als Slav' und Magyaren schuf / Sie streiten um
Worte nicht hamisch, / Sie folgen, ob Deutsch auch der Feldherrenruf / Denn: Vorwarts!
1st Ungrisch und Bohmisch."
" Bittner. S. 26*-29*.
l2 Goldinger. S. 72.
I' Gustav Winter. Das neue Gebaude des K. und K. Haus-, hof und staatsarchivs ZLI
Wien. Wien, 1903. S. 24.
272
Ab Imperio, 312007
to a number of professionally run archives, imperial, royal, and provincial,
with broader public access.
The archives of medieval Hungary had been dispersed during the period
of Turkish occupation and their remnants destroyed during the liberation of
Buda in 1686. In 1875 the National Archives of Hungary (literarally Archives of the Land, Magyar Orsza'gos Leve'lta'l; MOL) opened. This repository owed its foundation to the old national archives created by an act of
the Hungarian diet in 1723 and finally founded in 1756 to house the records
of Hungary's viceroy and diet, now supplemented by the transfer of the
records for the Hungarian and Transylvanian Court Chanceries and the
provincial governments for Hungary and Tran~ylvania.'~
The Kingdom of
Croatia, which was associated with the Hungarian crown but had its own
government and diet, established its national archives after 1870 with the
accession of records from the Hungarian provincial government and Court
Chamber archives. In the Austrian half, Bohemia founded separate archives
for its diet (Archives of the Land, 1862) and provincial government (1882),
and other crown lands followed suit. Contemporaries considered archives
an attribute of citizenship (nationhood) and statehood (sovereignty). The
prehistory of the Hungarian archives and the separate institutions in Prague
illustrate how these concepts did not necessarily coincide. The Hungarian
diet had led the way in creating archives of the land in contradistinction to
those of the ruler and bureaucracy.
The compromise laws designated three ministries as imperial and royal
(kaiserlich kind koniglich, k. und k.), responsible to the two parliaments and
charged with administering the Dual Monarchy's common affairs: the imperial and royal Ministries of Foreign Affairs, War, and Finance. As we
saw, these common affairs already had their central archives in Vienna,
reporting to the respective ministries. Therefore they now became AustroHungarian archives. In practice this meant that Hungarians (as well as Slavs)
were added to the archival staff, and the adequate processing of and access
to records about Hungary in the central archives became a matter of public
debate and the interpellations of the annual meetings between the imperial
and royal ministers and the parliamentary delegations that voted their budgets. Two Hungarians even became directors of the imperial and royal arl4 Gyozo Ember. A kktszBzCves Orszagos LevCltar // LevCltbi kozlemknyek. 1956. Vol.
27. Pp. 3-30 provides an overview of the Hungarian archives' history. The recent booklength history was unavailable to me: Janos Lakos. A Magyar Orszagos LevCltar tortenete.
Budapest, 2006.
I
J. Niessen, Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation?
chives: Lajos Thall6czy in the HojJzamrnerarchiv (1885-1916) and Arp6d
Kirolyi in the HHSA (1909-13).15
Thall6czy's appointment was an indirect consequence of the Habsburgs'
last imperial acquisition, the military occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in
1878. Administration of the territory by either Austria or Hungary would
have destabilized the delicate balance between the two halves of the Monarchy, so it was placed under the authority of imperial and royal ministry of
finance. Gyula Andrissy, as joint foreign minister, had advocated the occupation but the unpopularity of this move contributed to his resignation. Now
there was no longer a Hungarian among the three joint ministers, but one of
Andrissy's diplomatic appointments would fill the bill. In 1882 BCni Killay (1839-1903), a Hungarian former diplomat who had studied Slavic languages, served as ambassador in Belgrade, and written historical studies of
Serbia, became joint minister of finance and governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Killay appointed Thallbczy, a young historian and archivist at the
MOL, as director of the Hofiammerarchiv. Like his minister, Thall6czy
was interested in Serbian affairs and a supporter of Habsburg expansion in
the Balkans. Killay also assigned Thall6czy a role in the ongoing contest
for the possession of the numerous records about Hungarian administration
in the Hofkamrnerarchiv. The new director proceeded to separate out Hungarian records with the surreptitious help of Hungarian researchers, but he
took no further action.16
Hungarian ultras wanted all records of Hungarian administration moved
to Hungary. The most sensitive of these, to which Franz Joseph would never
agree because they involved him personally, were the archives of the revolutionary government that was suppressed militarily in 1849, and then the
subsequent military government before the partial restoration of the Court
Chancery and provincial government in 1860. In 1884 the Hungarian delegation presented a very different proposal to create a central Austro-Hungarian archives that would include material from the HHSA and others still
under the control of the dynasty, and the Austrian delegation supported it as
I s On Hungarians in the central archives see Imre Ress. A Badeni IevCltiri egyezmeny
16tre~~tte.
A levkltiri jogvita tortheti gyokerei - a nemzetl IevCltirak 6s a Monarchla
leviltiri orokskge, which is the introductory study to A badenz osztrrik-rnagyar levkltriri
szerzb'dks okmrinytrira, a document collection now in press.
l 6 Eva Somogyi. Hagyomany Cs atalalkulis a Ballhausplatzon. A kiiliigyminisztCrium
vezeto magyar tisztviseloi /I Somogyi. Hagyomany Cs atalalkulis: Allam Cs biirokricla
a dualista Habsburg Monarchikban. Budapest, 2006. Pp. 100-101; Ferenc Glatz.
TortCnetir6 es politika: Szekfii, Steier, Thim Cs Miskolczy nemzetrol Cs 811amr61. Budapest, 1980. Pp. 127-130.
274
Ab Zmperio, 312007
well. The director of the HHSA opposed this proposal because he perceived
it to be directed against him; Thall6czy appears to have been on the other
side. Then in 1896 the delegations proposed that Hungarian records in the
Hojkammerarchiv be sent to Hungary.17
Institutional and political interests were very important for the failure of
these proposals, but the growing adherence to original order among archivists was also a factor. Avid Kirolyi and his predecessor for most of the
dualist period, Alfred von Arneth (1868- 1897), took opposing positions on
original order. Arneth began his long career as director of the HHSA in
1868 by announcing its opening to historical research, which he had advocated earlier but was anchored in article 17 of the new Austrian constitution: "Scholarship and teaching is free" (i.e., unfettered).18He set an example for the increasing use of the HHSA by contemporary historians in his
authoritative life of Maria Theresa in nine volumes.19The work is by no
means a hagiography, but its portrayal of the architect of modern empire
undeniably served as a model formulation of the Austrian idea embodied in
the dynasty, army, and progressive legislation. Ameth's preoccupation with
Maria Theresa no doubt also heightened his awareness of her charge to the
HHSA that it focus on the procurement of individual documents that were
important for the defense of imperial unity.
There were still limits to the freedom of research in the HHSA. First, the
end point by year of creation for records that were closed to research was
very far back by our current standards: from 1841 to 1885 it was 1740, then
until 1905 it was 1830, and the until the end of the Monarchy it was 1847.20
In practice Arneth could waive this limit, as in the case of a princess who
justified her interest in the records of the Austrian occupation of Bukovina
in 1775 by research in the history of her family. When a work entitled The
Theft of Bzikovina appeared anonymously in Bucharest in 1875, Franz
Joseph himself reproached Arneth for his mistake.21Five years later Ar" Bittner.
S. 32*-35*.
Ibld. S. 171*.
l 9 Geschichte Marla Theresias. Bd. I-X. W~en,1863-1879.
20 Blttner. S. 173*.
21 Bittner. S. 176*. The only contemporary Romanian works with the title Rcprrea BLLcovinei I could identify were by the much better known M1ha11Eminescu and Mlhail
Kogilniceanu rather than Massalsky. She might have supplied her information to either
one of them. Emlnescu also translated volume 7, pertaining to the occupation of Bucovina, of the collect~onof documents on Romanian history by Eudoxiu Hurmuzaki, Docurnenteprrvitoure la istorra Rombnilor. The comp~lerof this collection was a Romanian
from Austrian Bucovlna who also conducted research in the HHSA; cf. Auer. Das
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neth denied access to the Prussian historian Heinrich von Treitschke, arguing in his note to the foreign minister that there was little hope his antiAustrian views could be modified by examination of Austrian documents
because he "systematically debased history writing into a handmaiden of
partisan politics.22Archivists were required in principle to examine every
individual document for dangerous content, which was extremely timeconsuming.
It was during the Arneth years that the Institute for Austrian Historical
Research (Institut fur ~sterreichischeGeschichtsforschung, IOG) at the
University of Vienna became the requisite training ground for archivists in
the central archives and many other archives as well. It was founded in
1854 with the goal of propagating a historical consciousness centered in
greater Austria. With the passage of time this goal would take a back seat to
the particular strength of the institute in the auxiliary sciences of history on
the model of the Parisian ~ c o l edes Chartres: diplomatics, paleography,
heraldics, and related disciplines. The program was strong in medieval history, but also closely attuned to contemporary developments in libraries
and archives. Archivists were still civil servants, but also professionals and
historians who conducted research and published their findings and often
taught in the IOG.
The fourteen Hungarian graduates of the program included &pbd KBrolyi.23Original order was becoming the predominant principle of archival
thinking in this period: IOG director Theodor Sickel pronounced his support for it already in 1869. Arneth was highly regarded among historians
for his opening of the HHSA to researchers, but his view of original order
was increasingly anachronistic. Bittner writes that according to oral tradition in the HHSA the Hungarian historian and close colleague of Sickel,
Vilmos Fraknbi, was the Hungarians' choice to head the proposed AustroHungarian archive^.'^ In 1910 the International Archival Congress declared
its support for the principle of provenance; the HHSA followed suit in the
same year, and the MOI, two years later.25As director of the HHSA Kirolyi
rejected the joint foreign minister's proposed exchange of documents with
the Bavarian State Archives on the eve of World War I, despite the opportunity it presented to acquire documents of IstvAn Bbcskai, the Prince of Transylvania and rival of the Habsburgs in the early seventeenth century. He
wrote: "the application of the completely improper and harmful geographical principle to the degree proposed by the royal Bavarian government
would in some cases cause heavy losses to certain holdings of the imperial
and royal Haus-, Hof- and Staat~archiv."~~
Not only the theory, but the buildings of the principal archives of Austria-Hungary began to take on familiar, modem contours as the state itself
neared its dissolution. In the last years of the Monarchy the chief archives
of Vienna and Budapest gained state of the art facilities with office and
reading space separated from stack space for more efficient operations and
greater security. The HHSA had operated in a section of the joint foreign
ministry building on the Ballhausplatz, a short walk from the imperial
palace, for decades. In 1899-1902 the new building, well known to historians of the Habsburg Monarchy, arose on the other side of the same block,
on the Minoritenplatz. The researcher is conscious of his close proximity to
the Hoiburg as he approaches the reading rooms on a grand staircase dominated by turn of the century paintings of Franz Joseph receiving his ministers and dignitaries in festive costume. There were generously appointed
reading rooms and secure access to the section of the stacks where the
records of the imperial and royal dynasty were stored.27
The director responsible for this project, Gustav Winter, drew a connection between this achievement and the opening of the archives in 1868 and
the foundation in 1895 of the Austrian Council on Archives for archives:
these actions were not only beneficial for the internal organization of our
archives. "That they contain not just old plunder, but treasures that will not
fall into decay as tiredinslm et glirium pabula, that for their content to serve
as the seed of rich scholarly harvests they require professional care: we
Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarch~v.S. 65. The brochure Ripzrea Bz~covinelthat is attributed
Lo Eminescu appeared in 1875.
22 Bittner. S. 186*.
23 Manfred Stoy. Die Ausbildung von ungarischen Historikem am Institut fir Osterreichische Geshichtsforschung 11 Das Institutionserbe der Monarchie. Das Fortleben der
gemeinsamen Vergangenheit in den Archrven. Horn, 1998 (Mitteilungen des Osterreichischen Staatsarchivs, Sonderband 4). S. 47-63.
24 Bittner. S. 34*; Stoy. S 50. Bittner was unable to find documentary support for this
tradition, however.
LevCltiri ismeretek kezikonyve. P. 225.
Ress. Pp. 5-6, citing Fritz Koller. Bayern-~alzburg-Osterreich: Das Projekt des Archivalientauschs 1910-1914 I/ Festschrift Hermann Rumschottel zum 65. Geburtstag;
Archivalische Zeitschrift. 2006. Bd. 88. H. 1. Teilband. S. 472.
" Winter, passim. The photographs in this work reveal paintings that were still visible
when I used the HHSA in 1983. All archival stacks were closed to the public and separated from the public and office space by iron doors; in addition, the part of [he stacks
for the Haznarchiv (imperial family) possessed locked doors in front of the stack rows
themselves.
276
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J. Niessen, Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation?
may hope that these views have become since 1868 and 1895 the inalienable
property of the state institutions that possess archives."28In asserting the
commitment to public access Winter was evidently sensitive to contemporary criticism of the manner in which the HHSA had amassed its holdings.
The MOL in Budapest struggled increasingly with space shortages in
various buildings in the medieval castle district of Buda overlooking the
Danube. The new building, on a promontory at the Vienna Gate, was planned
and begun in 1913 but only completed in 1923. Its location at the opposite
end of the district from the massive royal palace overlooking the Danube
symbolized the dichotomy of crown and land in the Hungarian constitution. In contrast to the Viennese palace in which historians conduct research
on the empire, historians of Hungary are reminded through the MOL's castle-like neo-Romanesque exterior and the paintings inside that Hungary
began as a medieval hngdom. The frescoes that researchers pass on the
way to the reading rooms depict events like King BCla I11 decreeing the
keeping of records in 1181, while stained glass windows with the coats of
arms of the former royal cities, most of them by 1923 outside Hungary in
Slovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, dominate the stairwells.
Contested Archives
There is much precedent for the transfer of archives as the result of
territorial change. An avowedly incomplete list of treaties about such transfers records 183 of them.29The legitimation of such transfers in international law is understandable not only because of the documentation of rights
and privileges they contain, but because agencies' records are vital for the
modem administration of the acquired territories. The Habsburgs stipulated
such transfers in the Peace of Westphalia that concluded the Thirty Years
War, and deposited in the HHSA the archives of Lorraine owned by Maria
Theresa's late husband Stephen when he died in 1765. Emperor Napoleon
carted off to Paris not only art treasures, but substantial old archives of the
Popes and Habsburgs from the Vatican and Vienna that would constitute
part of his planned imperial archives. It is remarkable that most of them
Ibid. S. 5.
2"'Non-exhaustive table of treaties containing provisions relating to the transfer of archives in case of succession of States," in Mohammed Bedaoui. Eleventh Report on
Succession in Respect of Matters Other than Treaties /I Yearbook of the International
Law Commission. 1979. Vol. 11. No. 1. P. 67; cited by Michael Silagi. Die Internationalen Regelungen zum Archivgut der Habsburgermonarchie nach 1918: Zum Schicksal
von Archiven beim Staatsverfall /I Siidost-Forschungen. 1996. Bd. 55. S. 3 11.
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Ab Imperio, 312007
survived the round trip when his plan came to naught.30As we have seen,
the HHSA gained the records of the defunct Holy Roman Empire and Republic of Venice in the same period. Yet at the conclusion of the war of
1866 Austria had to surrender both its rule and its archives for the Italian
states of Lombardy and Venetia.
Archives were treasured booty for the Austro-Hungarian army in World
War I. In November 1915 troops discovered the records of the Serbian foreign office, prime minister, and Belgrade police up to 1914 that had been
placed for safekeeping in a monastery. Within a month the first parts of the
archive were in Vienna, and a "Serbian documents commission" including
two foreign service officers and five archivists of the HHSA set to work
selecting documents for publication that would justify the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia in 1914. The first product of their work was a private print publication of the joint foreign ministry in 1916. Formal publication was halted in 1917 in consideration of the reputation of Serbian politicians during the secret Habsburg peace negotiations. Many of these controversial documents were published in Berlin twelve years later.3' The occupation of Bucharest by the Central Powers in December, 1916 also brought
an archival windfall in the form of Romanian archives that the Hungarians
hoped would document the government's support for Romanian irredentism
in Transylvania before its entry into the war in August, 1916. A large quantity of documents were transferred to Budapest where they were never published, but apparently provided some of the documentation for the very
critical histories of the Romanian national movement by Benedek Jancs6
that were published shortly thereafter. Romanian troops discovered and reclaimed the documents in the courtyard of a government building, txposed
to the elements, when they occupied Budapest in the summer of 1919.32
This history of archival transfers that the lands of East Central Europe
had experienced helps explain the alacrity with which the successor states
of the dissolved Habsburg Monarchy laid claim to its archival legacy. Italy,
the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later called Yugoslavia),
Charles KecskemCti. Displaced European Archives: Is it Time for a Post-War Settlement? // American Archivist. 1992. Vol. 55. Pp. 132-138. The author, as Executive
Director of the International Council on Archives, sought to bring about international
cooperation concerning captured archives.
''Bittner. S. 198-199*; M. BoghitchCvitch. Die auswartige Politik Serbiens, 1903-1914.
Bd. 1: Geheimakten aus serbischen Archiven. Berlin, 1928.
32 Benedek Jancso. ErdCly Cs a nagyromin aspiriciok. Budapest, 1918; Idem. A romin
irredentists mozgalmak tort6nete. Budapest, 1920.
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Romania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia all secured parts of the dissolved state
on the basis of secret wartime treaties that assured their leaders of the victorious countries' support for their claims. The new territories had lived decades or centuries separate from their new compatriots, often in very different administrations and social structures; Czechoslovakia was a new state
whose territory came exclusively from the former Austrian and Hungarian
halves of the Monarchy. The integration of the new territories was an adrninistrative challenge for which they believed archival transfers were essential.
Italy, the strongest of the successor states, moved first to claim its legacy. Italian troops presented themselves in Vienna and, by force of arms,
effected the surrender by powerless Austrian officials of record series still
in Austrian hands after the transfers of 1866 that arose from the administration of lands now in Italy and of works of art that had come into Austrian
possession, the Italians argued, unjustly. Austrian historians today agree
that the origin of these record series on newly Italian territory makes their
cession to Italy not very objectionable on the principle of provenance, but
they take strong exception to the use of force and take issue with some of
the claims to art works and regret the fact that the contemporary Austrian
public demonstrated much more concern for the art works than the archives.
In fact the use of force produced much negative publicity for the Italian
position and motivated it to conclude a cultural agreement with Austria in
1919 that the latter found acceptable. By this agreement Italy recognized
the principle of provenance rather than pertinence as the proper criterion
for archival and artistic transfers and the adjudication of a three-judge court
for future disputed cases.33
other successor states were not in a position to hasten their claims with
military force, but enjoyed different sources of strength. At the peace conference in St. Germain they argued successfully for the recognition of their
territorial claims and reparations from the property of Austria, whose claims
to be a new state rather than the legal successor of Austria-Hungary were
rejected. Still, Austria won the same victory conceded by Italy on the principle of archival provenance in the face of the successor states' claims to
the transfer of all archival records pertaining to their new territories, reAlphons Lhotsky. Die Verteidigung der Wiener Sammlungen kultur- und naturhistorischer Denkmaler durch die Erste Republik 11 Aufsatze und Vortrage. Bd. 4: Die
Haupt- und Residenzstadt Wien; Sammelwesen und Ikonographie; Der osterreichische
Mensch. Mdnchen, 1974. S. 164-2 11; Rudolf Neck. Zu den osterreichisch-italienischen
Archivverhandlungen nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg 11 Mitteilungen des Osterreich~schen
Staatsarchivs. 1978. Bd. 3 1. S. 434-441.
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Ab Imperio, 3/2007
gardless of their presence in the records of territorial or central agencies.
This, at least, is the argument of Austrian and Hungarian historians. The
treaty does not use the word provenance, as the Austrians demanded, nor
does it use the word pertinence as their opponents desired. The disputed
article 93 requires the cession of all "archives.. . belonging to the administration in the ceded territories"; could "belonging" also mean pertaining?
The plenipotentiary for Austrian archival affairs at the peace talks, Oswald
Redlich, and his deputy Ludwig Bittner were certain it could not.34In any
event the treaty stipulated that the successor states should regulate their
specific claims through bilateral agreements with Austria.
Czechoslovakia was the first to reach agreement with Austria, and it set
the precedent for the Italian and Romanian bilateral agreements that followed. The agreement for Austria was not difficult, based on its recognition of provenance as its strongest negotiating position, to the cession of
archival series originating in the Bohemian lands such as those removed
from Prague by Taulow von Rosenthal in the eighteenth century or the
Bohemia Court Chancery in the HHSA and Bohemian and Moravian administrative records already residing in the ceded territories. Much more
painful was the agreement to cede individual documents from 1888 onward
(with related earlier documents) pertaining excl~~sively
to the Bohemia lands.
According to Austrian historians this regrettable concession was extorted
as the price of desperately needed foodstuffs for the hungry Austrian population. To carry out this provision the agreement provided for extraordinary
archival delegates of the successor states in the Austrian archives who were
given full access to the archives for the purpose of identifying the documents to be separated. Many of the Czech delegates were quite recent employees of the Austrian archives and knew their way around. Bittner writes
that despite the unhappiness on the Austrian side and disagreements that
had to be negotiated about many individual documents, the process of separation generally went forward in a collegial and efficient fashion.15 Similar bilateral agreements ensued with Italy and Romania about the cession
of archival material, with similar results. A similar agreement could not be
''Ludwig Bittner. Die zwischenstaatichen Verhandlungen iiber das Schicksal der osterreichischen Archive nach dem Zusarnmenbr~ichOsterreich-Ungarns N Archiv fur Politik und Geschichte. 1925. Bd. 4. S. 73-76; Major Peace Treaties of Modern History
1648- 1967. Vol. 3. New York, 1970. P. 1568.
35 Walter Hummelberger. Das Osterreichisch-~schechoslowakische
Archivubereinkommen Vom 18. Mai 1920 N Scrinium. 1985. Bd. 32. S. 43-65; Bittner. Die zwischenstaatlichen Verhandlungen. S. 82-96; Bittner. Das Wiener Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv
in der Nachkriegszeit N Archivalische Zeitschrift. 1925. Bd. 35. S. 156-163.
J. Niessen, Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation?
reached with the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, although it
did recover the Serbian documents that had been captured in 1915. Due to
the nature of Austrian administration under the Monarchy most of the documents separated on the basis of pertinence came not from the HHSA, but
from the HoJkammerarchiv and the records of the imperial-royal (i.e., Cisleithanian or Austrian) Archives of Internal Affairs and Justice that later became the core of the General Administrative Archive or Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv.
The postwar archival settlement for Hungary involved both similarities
and differences. The Treaty of Trianon also ceded substantial territories to
the successor states, stipulated reparations from state property, established
the principle of provenance for archives on the ceded territories, and invited
Hungary to conclude bilateral archival agreements with the successor states.
An interesting difference, however, was the concession of a Hungarian claim
to joint Austro-Hungarian institutions that contradicted the identification
of Austria as the sole inheritor of joint property in the Treaty of St. Germain. This concept was consistent with Hungarian understanding of the
joint institutions. During 1918-1919 Hungarian cultural officials and archivists led by Arpiid Kiirolyi, in collaboration with some archivists of the
successor states, worked out an ambitious plan to establish under the auspices of an International Archival Scholarly Institute a joint, international
administration for the former Austro-Hungarian archives. Under this plan
the archives would constitute the joint property of the successor states and
all would send archival delegates for the purpose of participating in their
management. In this way the transfer of archives would become unnecessary. The promulgation of the Treaty of St. Germain, by granting Austria
the sole authority to cede transferred archives, made the proposal impossible. In retrospect the relationships among the successor states were also a
powerful obstacle. The national principle was supreme.)l
Would joint access have provided for better cooperation among the region's historians and prevented the polarization of their historical visions?
Hungary's successor states chose not to enact bilateral agreements with it,
with the sole exception of an agreement with Romania in 1924 that regulated
the exchange of court, landholding and vital records, but not large record
groups as in the Austrian agreements.)' Acording to one Hungarian histori-
Ress. A Badeni IevCltAri egyezmkny. Pp. 18-22.
P. 3 18. The same study notes (Pp. 322-323) that after World War I1 Hungary
was obligated to cede to Yugoslavia certain record groups that allegedly pertained to the
South Slavic region.
36
" Silagi.
282
Ab Zmperio, 312007
an "based on considerations of state and historical policy [the Hungarian
successor states] renounced the acquisition, indeed the research of Hungarian source material. This was not of primary importance for the historical
syntheses justifying the existence of the new national states, in the center of
which were the proof of the fictitious Czechoslovak national unity, the
reality of the trilingual Yugoslav nation, and the eternal association of the
three Romanian principalities. The intensive research of Hungarian sources
would just lead to counterproductive results."38This is a partisan view of
the young nations' historiography. Like the historians of post-Trianon Hungary itself, the Slovak, Romanian, and South Slavic historians were coming to terms with the new configuration of the region and the home country
in politically charged times. All these countries produced historical works
in that period that are of lasting value, and others that were inspired by a
polemical urge to set the record straight.
Historians of the Austrian successor states had the benefit of transferred
archives, tom in many cases out of their historical context, but those of the
Hungarian successor states did not due to the lack of bilateral agreements.
The transfer of archives and the creation of new national archives did indeed strengthen the development of conflicting national historiographies,
but these had already emerged in the time of the Monarchy with the advantage of access to the imperial (really joint imperial and royal) archives and
also the archives of incipient national institutions like the provincial diets
and governments. We saw earlier that Hurmuzaki was able to complete his
document collection on Romanian history with the full support of the HHSA,
and non-Austrians continued to use the HHSA after 1918 when all restrictions on use had beer1 lifted except those imposed by records' year of creation or depository agreements for personal papers that required permission from the owner." Its user statistics in 1924 show its researchers included a substantial minority of citizens of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yug~slavia."~
'8 Ress. A Monarchia IevCltkri oroksige Cs a nemzeti levirltirak /I Eur6pai utas. 2007.
No. 2. P. 60.
39 An example of such depository agreements is the one regulating the papers of Archduke Franz Ferdinand who died in Sarajevo in 1914. My research in the papers in 1992
still required the HHSA to secure permission from a family member.
Bittner. Das Wiener Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in der Zwischenkriegszeit. S. 176.
In order of number, the countries with the most researchers were Austria and Germany
with 281, Italy 110, Hungary 82, Czechoslovakia 72, France 64, Yugoslavia 34.. . Thus,
the second, third, and fifth countries were all successor states.
J. Niessen, Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation?
Austrian and Hungarian archivists reestablished their special relationship despite the failure of Kbrolyi's proposal. In 1923 they concluded the
parameters of an agreement that was then formalized at Baden bei Wien in
1926. According to the Baden Agreement, Austria would manage the archival legacy of the Dual Monarchy according to its own laws, but recognize the Hungarian concept of joint cultural heritage (patrimoine culturel)
and accommodate the collaboration of Hungarian archival delegates in the
former joint archives who would be chosen by the Hungarian side and sworn
in by the Hungarian ambassador. The archival delegates in collaboration
with the newly established Vienna Hungarian Historical Institute produced
forty volumes of a source collection on Hungarian history through their
work in the Vienna ar~hives.4~
The Baden Agreement was in its way unique
and unprecedented. The concept of joint cultural heritage was a precedent
for the recognition of international cultural heritage established by UNESCO
many decades later, but because it contradicted the Treaty of St. Germain
and the official views of Austria, the Baden Agreement was not published
in the interwar period, nor even mentioned in Bittner's extensive writings
on interwar archival issue^.^
It would be pleasant but misleading to end a survey of the interwar period on this upbeat note. Austria and Hungary chose to steer a collision course
with the successor states and procured the patronage of Nazi Gemany to
this end. The destruction of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia and
the division of Transylvania in 1938-1940 led once again to the transfer of
various archival series and the placement of cultural institutions under new
administration. Ludwig Bittner, who had defended Austrian archives at the
end of the war, published in 1925 the two long exposes on archival affairs
cited here, and then his excellent history of the HHSA in the first volume of
the Gesamtinventar published in 1936, applauded the Anschluss with Germany in 1938, and in 1941 saw the realization of his longstanding proposal
for the administrative coordination of Austria's central archives. The new
institution took the title Imperial Archives of Vienna, Reichsarchiv Wien.
Fontes Historiae Hungaricae Aevi Recentoris - Magyarorszig ~jabbkoriTortCnetCnek
Forrisai. Budapest, 1921-. Most volumes appeared in the interwar period, but the series
continued after 1945. On the history of the institute see Gibor irjviry. Klebelsberg
Kun6 Cs a bCcsi Magyar TijrtCneti IntCzet megalapitisa I/ Istvin Zombori (Ed.). Grdf
Klebelsberg Kuno emlkkezete. Szeged, 1995. Pp. 64- 101.
42 Ress. Die Ungarische Archivdelegation; Silagi. Pp. 3 19-324; various articles in Das
Institutionserbe der Monarchie. Das Fortleben der gemeinsamen Vergangenheit in den
Archiven. Silagi publishes the text of the Baden Agreement on pp. 324-333 of his study.
4'
Ab Imperio, 312007
Future historians may determine whether its director exercised his new
authority improperly, for instance, to acquire trophy archives or destroy
records of criminal activity. What is known is that this distinguished archivist of the old Monarchy and defender of its heritage committed suicide in
April 1945.43Under the name of Austrian State Archives, the administrative unity of central Austrian archives was perpetuated after 1945.
Archives for Historians
One of the problems with historians' reliance upon archives is that their
analysis is limited to archives that actually survive. We know that not all
the Vatican records taken to Paris by Napoleon made it back to Rome at the
end of his era. Archives may intentionally destroy some of their holdings in
the constant struggle for more storage space, or oppressive regimes may do
so at their end in order to protect the perpetrators. The Kriegsarchiv resorted
repeatedly to selective destruction or disposition (in German Skartierung
or Ausscheid~lng)to ensure space for what was most important. Archival
histories do not reveal evidence of overtly political motives for disposition,
but it may be supposed that offices were more interested in preserving documentation about central affairs than those pertaining to subaltern peoples
and everyday life. Sometimes disposition took on a scale, however, that
aroused the concern and countermeasures of the monarch.44Paper dealers
and even private collectors of documents also profited from the elimination
of documents. Unfortunately for a time there were Austrian reguIations
that gave the agencies destroying records the first option to use the space
gained thereby, providing them with a direct motivation for such destruction, until countermeasures were taken.45
The archives' criteria for the elimination of documents, while not always explicit, do seem to have preserved the series most valuable for research, although the questions and kinds of sources valued by researchers
have changed with time. Destruction of documents due to war and civil
unrest has been more disturbing because it affected entire record groups
43 Arthur J. May. Austria. P. 10. There may be some parallel in Bittner's later career to
that of Hugo Andres KruR, the director the State Library in Berlin who committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin in 1945. He seems to have played a role in the confiscation of collections in the occupied territories as director of the Imperial Exchange Service (Reichstn~~schstelle).
44 Oskar Regele. Die Aktenskartierung im Wiener Kriegsarchiv in alter und neuer Zeit N
Archivalische Zeitschrift. 1955. Bd. 50-5 1. S. 217-221.
45 Goldinger. S. 57-76.
J. Niessen, Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation?
that were of undeniable i m p ~ r t a n c eA
. ~riot
~ on the Viennese RingstraBe in
front of the Palace of Justice in 1927 caused the building to catch on fire,
bringing very heavy losses for the Archives of Internal Affairs and Justice.
Fortunately, much of the information survived because these holdings were
prime targets of the pertinence-based transfers to Czechoslovakia, Italy,
and Romania a few years earlier, some had been selected for published
collections of documents, and Austrian offices often kept drafts and copies
of official correspondence that are now preserved in other archives. The
Second World War was much more destructive of archives than the first.
The Viennese archives moved records into safekeeping as the front approached the city, but some were destroyed in their temporary locations.
Destruction was much worse for the Hungarian National Archives, in its
exposed position at the end of Buda's castle district that was the target of
Soviet bombardment for rnonths in early 1945. Losses were even heavier in
1956 when local fighting destroyed part of the building before there was
time to move records to a more secure location.47
Fortunately the other major cities and archives of the Habsburg heritage
suffered far less substantial wartime damage. The failure of attempts to
centralize the archives in Vienna and the archival transfers after 1918 helped
preserve the archival legacy by decentralizing it. The archives of provincial and local state bodies and especially the churches survive today in the
successor states to document the lives of the subject peoples. The diocesan
archives have been especially important for the reconstruction of their history in the Habsburg Monarchy because they had a formative role in their
cultural identity. Religion and ethnicity often coincided, church-administered schools were the principal outpost for education in the national languages, and bishops for many years acted as political leaders beyond their
religious functions. The wartime loss of Polish archives was uniquely catastrophic, estimated at 74%. Fortunately for researchers on the history of
Poles in the Habsburg Monarchy, this destruction did not affect the archives
of the free city of Krak6w and the Galician provincial government, which
survive today in Poland and Ukraine.48
-
Leopold Auer. Archival Losses and their Impact on the Work of Archivists and Historians 11 Archivum. 1996. Vol. 42: Memory of the World at Risk: Archives Destroyed,
Archives Reconstituted. Pp. 1-10 (the special issue of the journal of the International
Council on Archives).
"'Jinos Lakos. Die Zerstomng des Archivmaterials des Ungarischen Koniglichen Justizministeriums wahrend der Revolution von 1956 11 Archivum. 1996. Vol. 42. Pp. 255-266.
4S Hanna Rajewska and Isabel Roskau-Riedel. Poland /I A Guide to East-Central European Archives. Pp. 83-86; Patricia Grimsted. Ukraine I/ Ibid. Pp. 178-80.
''6
Ab Imperio, 312007
Wartime destruction helped inspire a renewed attention to archival preservation and source publication. The archives of the successor states in the
Eastern Bloc incorporated extensive microfilming into their five-year plans
for bilateral cooperation. At first the microfilming reflected individual research projects and needs, and the resulting films were not very useful for
others. To address this problem, after 1960 the microfilm plans became
more systematic, targeting entire record groups if they contained a significant amount of material about the interested country. Hungary's archival
delegates in Vienna recommenced activity in this period, after a politically
inspired hiatus, and took the lead in identifying records for microfilming in
the Viennese archives. By 1990 Hungary had filmed 30 million frames of
material in Vienna, primarily from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. As impressive as this number sounds, it still only accounted for 10%
of material identified by the delegates as worthy of filming. As examples of
other filming activity, it is known that the Hungarians also filmed in Romania, Czechoslovalua, and Yugoslavia, and the Romanians filmed records of
the Serbian church in Yugoslavia that were important for its own history
within the M ~ n a r c h y . ~ ~
The primary training and qualifications of archivists in Vienna and the
successor states since 1945 have been in history. The historical activity of
archivists in the HHSA benefits from the work space in the building since
1902, which was designed to facilitate collaborative work like the general
inventory volumes previously cited. The publication of the protocols of the
Austrian and Austro-Hungarian Council of Ministers have been two major
collaborative projects of Austrian and Hungarian archivists and historian^.^^
Archivists of the HHSA take pride in their status as productive scholars,
arguing that it contributes fundamentally to their ability to advise researchers. As they write, there is "a cooperative connection between archival activity and scholarly research" and the archival interview is a "specialized
dialog of scholars."51
Ress. Die ungarische Archivdelegation in W ~ e n ;Personal email messages of Imre
Ress, October 28 and 30,2007. Dr. Ress was Hungary's arch~valdelegate in the HHSA
in 1980-1987.
O' Bittner. Einleitung" [historical introduction to the Gesarntinverztar].S. 198*; Helmut
Rumpler et al., Die Protokolle des osterreichischen Ministerrates, 1848- 1867. Wien,
1970-; ~ v Somogyi.
a
Die Protokolle des gemeinsamen Mlnistei-rates der bsterre~chischungarischen Monarchie, 1867- 19 18. Budapest, 1991-.
j' Alfred Kohler, Leopold Kammerhofer, and Elisabeth Springer. Die Bedeutung des
Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Wien als Statte internationaler Forschung // Springer
and Kammerhofer (Hgs.). Archiv und Forschung: Das Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv In
49
287
J. Niessen, Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation?
The postwar years brought not only continued openness of access for
research to the Viennese archives, but improved funding and international
collaboration. Archivists in the other successor states are also historians
who have distinguished themselves with historical publications. It is true
on the other hand lhat politically motivated limitations on archival access
marred the operations of many archives during the Communist period, but
this situation is fortunately now largely a thing of the past. The study of the
Habsburg Monarchy became a major field in the US, attracting many American historians to the Viennese archives and prompting funding from the
Austrian state for the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota that was the long-time publisher of the Austrian Studies Yearbook.
This journal recently published as a special issue a detailed guide to the
archives of the Habsburg Monarchy in the successor statess2The European
accession process has probably done even more than the purported internationalism of the preceding period to undermine the historiographical and
archival isolation of the countries of the region. Supranational states seem
less anomalous from the perspective of today.
SUMMARY
C T ~ T IIOCBRveHa
~R
MCTOPMM aBCTPO-BeHrepCKHX aPXHBOB Ha IIPOTXXeCy4eCTBOBaHMX MMIIePMH ki BnJIOTb A 0 OKOHYaHMR B~opofiMII~ 0 ~ ~0fiHb1.
0 6 HMII~~cK
apXHBbI
I I ~ B C O ~ C T B ~ H H O CMbICJIe
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CJIOBa B03HHKHMH BCWO
seiner Bedeutung fiir die Geschichte Osterreichs und Europas.'Wiener Beitrage zur
Geschichte der Neuzeit, 20. Wien, 1993. S. 9-18; the quotations are from p. 16. As a
young researcher in the HHSA I had two characteristic experiences, one of them with a
coauthor of this study and another with one of the contributors to Dze Protokolle des
osterreichischen Ministerrates. When I inquired whether there were any Austrian intell~gencereports on the Danubian Principalities in the 1860s, Dr. Springer not only told
me about the relevant record series but enthus~asticallyled me through the iron doors to
the HHSA stacks to show me the archival bundles so I could judge for myself about the
extent of the material and its finding aids! My other memorable consultation was with
Dr. Horst Brettner-Messner, who advised me about Austrian ~ m p e r ~records
al
including
those pertaining to min~sterof state Anton von Schmerling. The archivist had a certain
startling physical resemblance to Schmerling that gave his advice special weight for me.
32 Auer. Das Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv und die Geshichtswissenschaft. S. 59-61 ; The
guide was A Gliicle to East-Central Archives, which I have cited several times; it details
the manifold holdings for the history of the Habsburg Monarchy of all its successor
states other than Austria.
Ab Imperio, 312007
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J. Niessen, Records of Empire, Monarchy, or Nation?
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