The role of Galicia and Silesia in the constitution of Poland into a modern nation

Abstract

This article is a review of the paper dedicated to Galicia in the edition Die österreichisch-ugarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild (Vienna, 1898), which was published upon the initiative of Archduke Rudolf in 1886. The aim of this paper is not to present the culture, history, literature and economy of this country, but rather to show what this country was and how it functioned within Hapsburg Monarchy. From this collection it can be seen that the publisher's intention was to present the Monarchy as a whole and each of the individual countries it consisted of- Länder (the Empire did not have provinces). It is clear that the Court wanted its Länder to be modern nations, which it succeeded in doing and which this paper talks about. So the Monarchy consisted of a number of political and national units which were connected only by the person of the Emperor and King. Galicia was part of Poland, which after the division of this country went to to the Monarchy, and the borders of that part were slightly changed after the Napoleonic wars. Unlike the Poles in the Russian, Prussian and later German part of Poland, the Poles in Galicia had more rights than any the other minorities - they had partial sovreignity, because the Emperor controlled only the army, foreign affairs, economy and finance. For this reason Galicia became the leading part of the Polish nation upon its unification after World War I.