Imagining an Austrian Nation – Joseph Samuel Bloch and the Search for a Supraethnic Austrian Identity, 1846 – 1918

This book examines an Austrian identity based on a civic, rather than an ethnic conception of a national community. It analyzes the ideas of Joseph Samuel Bloch, an Austrian Jewish writer and politician, and compares them to those of other Austrian political thinkers of various ethnic and political backgrounds in order to discover how these individuals imagined a supraethnic Austrian nation.

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This book examines attempts to cultivate an Austrian identity based on a civic rather than an ethnic conception of a national community. It focuses on the ideas of Joseph Samuel Bloch, an Austrian-Jewish writer and politician who sought to cultivate a civic identity to unify the nationalities of multiethnic Austria. Bloch called for a hyphenated Austrian consciousness that respected the desire to protect pre-existing ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic bonds while building transethnic ties based on citizenship. This study also analyzes the ideas of his mentor, Adolf Fischhof, another Austrian-Jewish reform-minded politician. Finally, it compares Bloch's ideas to those of other Austrian reformers of various ethnic and political backgrounds in order to discover how they conceived of a supraethnic Austrian consciousness. "Imagining an Austrian Nation" explores the meaning of nationalism and identity in a pluralistic society, issues that confound humanity as much in the twenty-first century as they did in the nineteenth.