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Whether victorious or not, Central European states faced fundamental challenges after the First World War as they struggled to contain ongoing violence and forge peaceful societies. This collection explores the various forms of violence these nations confronted during this period, which effectively transformed the region into a laboratory for state-building. Employing a bottom-up approach to understanding everyday life, these studies trace the contours of individual and mass violence in the interwar era while illuminating their effects upon politics, intellectual developments, and the arts.
List of contents
Introduction Jochen Böhler, Ota Konrád and Rudolf Kucera Chapter 1. The Baltikumer: Collective Violence and German Paramilitaries after 1918
Mathias Voigtmann Chapter 2. Pogroms and Imposture: The Violent Self-Formation of Ukrainian Warlords
Christopher Gilley Chapter 3. Toward an Interactional Theory of Sexual Violence: The White Terror in Hungary between 1919 and 1921
Béla Bodó Chapter 4. The Many Lives of Mrs. Hamburger: Gender, Violence, and Counter-Revolution, 1919-1930
Emily R. Gioielli Chapter 5. "A Little Murderous Party": Poland after the First World War in the Works of Joseph Roth
Winson Chu Chapter 6. Suicide Discourses: The Austrian Example in the International Context from World War I to the 1930s
Hannes Leidinger Chapter 7. The "Healthy Nerves" of the Nation: War Neuroses in Austria-Hungary and its Successor States
Maciej Górny Chapter 8. Forging a "Winning Spirit": The North American YMCA and the Czechoslovak Army 1918-1921
Ondrej Matejka Chapter 9. When the Defeated Become Victorious: Averting Violence with Football in Post-1918 Romania
Catalin Parfene Afterword: The End of the Great War and Postwar Problems-Research Conclusions
Boris Barth
About the author
Jochen Böhler is director of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. His publications include Civil War in Central Europe: The Reconstruction of Poland, 1918–1921 (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Ota Konrád is a full professor of modern history at Charles University in Prague. His publications include Paths out of the Apocalypse Physical Violence in the Fall and Renewal of Central Europe, 1914-1922 (Oxford University Press, 2022. Together with Rudolf Kučera) and Geisteswissenschaften im Umbruch. Die Fächer Geschichte, Germanistik und Slawistik an der Deutschen Universität in Prag 1918–1945 (Berlin 2020).
Rudolf Kučera is director of the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences and associate professor of history at the Charles University in Prague. His publications include Paths out of the Apocalypse Physical Violence in the Fall and Renewal of Central Europe, 1914-1922 (Oxford University Press, 2022. Together with Ota Konrád) and Rationed Life: Science, Everyday Life, and Working Class Politics in the Bohemian Lands, 1914–1918 (Berghahn Books, 2016).
Summary
Whether victorious or not, Central European states faced fundamental challenges after the First World War as they struggled to contain ongoing violence and forge peaceful societies. This collection explores the various forms of violence these nations confronted during this period...
