"Wir sind alle mehr oder weniger in Galizien geboren"

Abstract

The study provides a comprehensive overview of Larry Wolff’s monograph "The Idea of Galicia. History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture" (Stanford University Press, Stanford, California 2010, pp. 486). The reviewed publication shows the problem of the formation of Galician awareness in the province of Austro-Hungarian Empire existing for 146 years, which was described as Galicia. The author of the work presents the various stages of the formation of ‘Galicia’s idea’, referring to the Polish, Ukrainian, Jewish and German-Austrian aspects of political, social, economic and cultural history of the region. The author does not evaluate individual narratives, treats them as equivalent cognitively, yet thoroughly discusses both extensive and minor texts on the basis of their thematic link with Galicia. The basic thesis of the book is the belief about the creation of a kind of ‘Galician nation’ that is common for residents of the region of collective multiethnic and multicultural identity based on the pattern of a Galician as a citizen fully identifying himself with his ‘private homeland’. Wolff’s monograph is a multilateral and interdisciplinary synthesis of borderline political history and cultural history, impressive because of its dimensions of research areas covered by the author.