Vol. XXXIV · 2003

Harald Binder

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Many East Central European towns and cities bear several names, reflecting the ethnic and religious diversity once characteristic of the region. The town chosen in 1772 by the Habsburgs as capital of their newly acquired province of Galicia serves as an example. In the second half of the nineteenth century Ruthenian national populists referred to the city as "L'viv"; Russophiles designated the city "L'vov." For Poles and Polonized Jews the town was "Lwów," and for Germans as well as German- and Yiddish-speaking Jews the city was "Lemberg." The ethnic and linguistic reality was, in fact, much less clear than these divisions would suggest. For much of the period of Habsburg rule, language barriers remained permeable. The city's inhabitants were multilingual, often employing different languages depending on the type of communication in which they were engaged. By the late nineteenth century, however, nationalists came to regard language as one of the most important objective characteristics defining their respective national communities. For example, Ruthenian intellectuals felt more comfortable communicating in Polish, but, when acting as politicians, they spoke and wrote in one of the varieties of "Ruthenian."