Multiculturalism in Slovakia c. 1900: Melting Pot or Salad Bowl?

Post date: 2024-03-27 06:22:15

My wife's father's ancestry was always kind of vaguely handwaved as "Austria-Hungary," but I know Austria-Hungary was more of a political union than any kind of overriding cultural identity. Her paternal grandfather emigrated from Slovenia, and his cultural identity seems pretty clearly aligned with that from his immigration paperwork. OTOH ...

Her paternal grandmother was born in Ohio to parents who emigrated from Hungary. Based on today's borders, the town they emigrated from is in Slovakia, but at the time it was part of the Kingdom of Hungary. They listed their nationality as Hungarian (true geopolitically, if not culturally), but, more importantly, they used the Hungarian name for the town on their paperwork instead of the Slovakian name. With only a few clues to go on, I don't want to draw too strong of a conclusion about how they would have identified themselves, but I'm curious since they seem like they may have been more Hungarian than Slovakian.

How multicultural would life have been in that part of Central Europe c. 1900? Did the cultural Slovaks happily interact with the cultural Hungarians (and the cultural Germans, for that matter), or did those various cultures all just stick to themselves as much as possible? I've read some history of the area, but what I remember of it is more on the "causes of World War I" side (Serbian separatism and the tensions of the age of empire in general). Slovakia was pretty far from Serbia though, and that area seems to have been an economic and cultural crossroads for a long time.

Are there any good resources for learning the cultural history of that part of Central Europe

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