Vol. XXXV · 2004

R. J. W. Evans

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ROBERT KANN IN HIS DAY famously asked large questions about nationality, revitalizing and imbuing with new academic rigor an already classic debate on ethnic sins of omission and commission in Central Europe. Language was, of course, always recognized as somehow intrinsic to this discussion; and it has exercised a fascination, whether lasting or just casual, for many with interest in the region. The Habsburg lands are renowned as the locus classicus of a polity whose ethnicities were notably marked by language. Moreover, they encompassed a large number (eleven in all, though it is a trope too to exaggerate the total!) of widely divergent languages: German; two Romance tongues, Italian and Romanian; a range of Slavonic languages from all the three branches-western, eastern, and southern-of that family; and Hungarian, or Magyar, from the Finno-Ugric group.