The area that constitutes the Austrian federal province of Burgenland belonged to the Hungarian part of the Habsburg empire until the end of World War I. This book helps us realize that geographical knowledge does not come ready-made. Instead, it is created by knowledge makers: geographers, historians, statisticians etc. This knowledge-making helped to legitimatize the area transferred between Austria and Hungary, shape the Burgenland identity, and depict its geopolitical role in the rise of national socialism. This book is about how those studying Burgenland, the creators of its geographical knowledge, saw and represented the province. It explores how they grasped the geographical characteristics of the region through their own perspective, influenced by their own professional positions, individual careers, motivations, and by the broader historical and social medium.

The way the area between the provinces of Lower Austria and Styria came about as Burgenland is enthralling, as is how the people there experienced this change of sovereignty and how everyday social and economic relationships were transformed. Tracing the geographical discourses in the interwar period and beyond, the book argues that Burgenland became a successful geographical project, and departs from thoughts of subdivision, unviability, and backwardness, concentrating instead on fertility, unity, and modernization.

Click here to download

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Introduction

Approaches of the book
Pictures of Burgenland

Chapter 2. The romance of the Monarchy

Seen from Cisleithania
Seen from Transleithania

Chapter 3. Discoverers

From ethnic mapping to preparations of peace
A geographer from Wisconsin
The most Austrian geographer
Burgenlandarbeit
Pionierarbeit
The breath of the forests and the romance of the puszta

Chapter 4. Burgenland and German geopolitics

The Empire comes back
Hands up, yogi!
Burgenland atlas

Chapter 5. Identity, tourism, propaganda

Burgenland special issues
Local history magazines, tourist guides

Chapter 6. The discovery of Burgenland in the spatial and temporal perspective.

The reactions of Hungarian geography and historical science
Geography beyond the Iron Curtain

Chapter 7. Private discovery – Burgenland progress

Between towns
The Hun, the Heinz and the Croat
Centers, hinterlands and transport
From emigration to expulsion
From gable-roofed peasant houses to the Alpine-type house
Between two borders

Chapter 8. Summary

Mike Heffernan, University of Nottingham

„From Borderland to Burgenland is a wonderful achievement. In eight expertly translated chapters, each beautifully illustrated and extensively referenced, Ferenc Jankó takes us on an absorbing journey into the contested historical geographies of a fascinating region. Our companions are a diverse and disputatious cast of teachers and tourists, artists and photographers, scientists and surveyors, and (perhaps most importantly) geographers and historians, all brilliantly analyzed in these elegantly written pages. From their fractious debates about languages and landscapes, societies and economies, and identities and cultures emerged a powerful idea of Burgenland as a ‘natural’ border region, an exemplification of the complex history and geography of Central Europe in the 20th century.”

Petra Svatek, Austrian Academy of Sciences

“In this work Ferenc Jankó analyses the geographical discovery of the geopolitically extremely interesting federal province, Burgenland, which was incorporated into the Republic of Austria in 1921. The geographical research was carried out not only by geographers, but also by representatives of other disciplines and local historians. The book deals with the practice of geographical research, the respective perspectives and careers of the researchers and how these have also contributed to the formation of Burgenland’s identity in times of political changes from the end of the Habsburg Empire to the time of National Socialism.”