The Austro-Hungarian Empire spans a dozen languages and dozens of peoples. For centuries it has held together through dynastic loyalty, Catholic tradition, and Habsburg bureaucratic authority. But since the middle of the nineteenth century, a new and dangerous force has swept across Europe: nationalism — the idea that shared language and culture should determine political identity and loyalty.
Nowhere is this tension more acute than in Bohemia, in the northwest corner of the empire. The town of Budweis/Budějovice — about 100 miles south of Prague — is about to hold municipal elections. Czech and German nationalists are competing for control. Imperial officials are trying to keep order. And many ordinary residents aren't sure which side, if any, to join.
Select the role you will play in the Budweis/Budějovice election of 1898. Each role comes with its own goals, advantages, and challenges. Read the descriptions carefully before deciding.
You are a resident of Budweis/Budějovice, a town of about 40,000 people in southern Bohemia, roughly 100 miles south of Prague. The town is famous for its brewery — in fact, there are now two: one German, one Czech. That tells you something about the state of things.
According to the 1900 census, the town has approximately 23,000 Czech-dominant speakers and 15,000 German-dominant speakers — but these numbers are contested, because the official census asked about "language of daily use" rather than "mother tongue," which tended to record more German speakers than there may actually have been.
The recent Badeni Crisis of 1897 — in which the Austrian Prime Minister granted full Czech linguistic autonomy, triggering German riots, then was forced to resign — has left the entire empire on edge. Municipal elections in Budweis on January 18 will be one of the first tests of whether the empire can hold together.
Czech speakers make up the majority of Budweis/Budějovice, but the town's political and economic life has long been dominated by the German-speaking minority. German speakers are generally wealthier, hold more positions in local government, and benefit from cultural and institutional connections across the empire.
Czech nationalism has been growing since the 1848 revolution. By 1898, Czech nationalist politics is being driven by the Young Czechs (Mladočeši), who favor direct political engagement, and newer, more radical parties like the Czech National Socialists, founded this very year. Despite internal divisions over tactics, Czechs remain remarkably united around shared goals: linguistic equality, political representation, and recognition of their cultural identity.
The Badeni Crisis gave Czechs hope — and then crushed it. Badeni's decree granting Czech linguistic autonomy was revoked under German pressure. Now the election in Budweis is a chance to demonstrate Czech political strength at the local level.
Your advantages: You are the numerical majority. You have growing political organization and momentum. Czech schools are overflowing with students. Demographic trends are in your favor.
Your disadvantages: You are less wealthy than your German counterparts. Germans currently dominate local government. The election system is divided into curias (property-based districts) that favor wealthy voters.
German speakers are the minority in Budweis/Budějovice by raw numbers, but they have long been the dominant group politically and economically. German speakers tend to be wealthier, hold more municipal offices, and have connections to the broader German-speaking world — including the powerful German Empire next door.
German nationalism in this period is split between two camps: liberal nationalists, who define German identity through language and culture (and are relatively open to bilingual speakers joining the German camp), and völkisch nationalists, who insist German identity is ethnic and hereditary. This division makes it harder for German nationalists to present a unified front — especially when compared to the relatively cohesive Czech movement.
The Badeni Crisis was, from your perspective, a triumph: German mass protests and parliamentary obstruction forced the revocation of a decree that would have required German bureaucrats to learn Czech. But the crisis also revealed how precarious German dominance is becoming as Czech demographic and political strength grows.
Your advantages: Wealth, political connections, and control of local government. The curia (property-based) voting system gives disproportionate weight to wealthy voters. You have institutional momentum.
Your disadvantages: You are a shrinking demographic minority. Internal divisions between liberal and völkisch nationalists weaken your unity. The empire is nominally neutral, which limits how far it will go to protect German dominance.
You are an official of the Habsburg Imperial administration, likely stationed in Budweis precisely because you are not from Bohemia — officials were often posted far from their home regions to ensure they would act as neutral arbiters rather than partisan allies of one ethnic group or another.
The empire's position is delicate. You are not neutral in the sense of having no opinions, but you are committed to maintaining the empire's integrity above all else. This means you cannot simply take the side of the Germans (even though German culture has historically been dominant in the imperial administration) — doing so would alienate the Czechs. But supporting Czech demands too strongly would trigger German riots like those of 1897.
The empire has already tried several approaches: the 1867 Ausgleich gave Hungary its own administration; the Taaffe government of the 1880s tried to balance Czech and German interests; the Badeni decrees were an attempt to satisfy Czech demands that backfired dramatically. Every solution seems to create new problems.
Your advantages: You have the legal authority of the state. You can use force if necessary. You are theoretically above the fray of nationalist politics.
Your disadvantages: Any action you take will be read as taking sides. You cannot use force without political consequences. The empire itself is divided between those sympathetic to German culture and those who want to be a genuinely supranational authority.
You are one of the many residents of Budweis/Budějovice who does not fit neatly into either the Czech or German nationalist camp. You might be bilingual (approximately 16% of children in Budweis were recorded as bilingual). You might be from a mixed Czech-German family. You might simply be someone who thinks of yourself primarily as a Habsburg subject, a Christian, a craftsman, or a neighbor — not as a "Czech" or a "German."
Both nationalist groups desperately want your support, and both find you deeply frustrating. Historians sometimes call people like you "nationally indifferent," though that phrase doesn't fully capture the diversity of reasons people refused to align with nationalist movements. Some of you are actively opposed to nationalism. Some of you are waiting to see which way the wind blows. Some of you have already shifted toward one camp or another for practical reasons — a job, a marriage, a business contract — and could shift back again.
You are not powerless. In a closely contested election, the "amphibian" vote can be decisive. Both nationalist groups know this, which is why their propaganda is often aimed directly at you.
Your advantages: You are courted by everyone. You can make pragmatic decisions without ideological constraints. You are not obligated to escalate or take extreme positions.
Your disadvantages: You have no organized political party or movement. Nationalist pressure — social, economic, and sometimes physical — can make it difficult to remain neutral. The longer the conflict goes on, the harder it becomes to stay out of it.
Answer the questions below based on your role. Think carefully about your group's goals, resources, and the political situation. There are no right or wrong answers — but your responses should reflect serious engagement with the historical circumstances.
The election was fought in three curias — property-based voting districts. In the first two curias, the Germans held a strong advantage based on wealth. But the third curia was bitterly contested.
In the lead-up to the vote, both nationalist camps focused on rallying their supporters through the press and public rallies. The election itself was extremely close: each German candidate who won defeated his Czech opponent by fewer than 120 votes. The campaign was also marred by accusations of fraud and bribery on both sides.
One colorful incident: a voter sold his vote to the highest bidder. He received, as payment, "five goulashes, two sausages, two portions of Emmental cheese, and nine sardines" — and then suffered such bad indigestion that he missed the election entirely.
Czech supporters who had gathered expecting victory responded to the German win with violence. They smashed more than 2,500 windows in German-identified buildings, attacked the homes of German politicians, targeted German-language schools — and also attacked Jewish-owned shops, as Czech nationalists generally assumed Jews to be German sympathizers.
Imperial authorities made over 60 arrests. The municipal government — dominated by German sympathizers — then made the townspeople bear the full cost of repairing the broken windows, which amounted to a de facto tax on the Czech community, whose windows had not been broken.
Now that you know what actually happened in Budweis in 1898 — and what happened to the empire over the next two decades — take a step back and reflect.