Deborah Coen

The Journal of Modern History, December 2010

Abstract

In one of the most evocative passages of literary nostalgia for the Habsburg world, Joseph Roth conjured the monarchy through aristocratic eyes as a series of geographic contrasts dissolving into a higher unity. Through the gaze of Count Morstin, on his habitual tours d’horizon of the fatherland, the Habsburg cliche´ of “unity in diversity” sprang to life. Roth’s story highlights the importance of the geographic imagination to the self-understanding of Habsburg-loyal German Austrians. But the intellectual roots of this imperial vision remain obscure, particularly those that lie in the work of Austria’s natural scientists of the late nineteenth century.

View the paper here: Climate and Circulation in Imperial Austria