Primary/On-Line Sources for Teaching

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Primary/On-Line Sources for Teaching

Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 07:23:45 -0600
Subject: Primary Sources for Teaching

I have just perused the syllabi on the Habsburg gopher. I was in search of primary sources for 19th century Eastern Europe, and noticed that except for _Radetzky March_ (of which I am not a big fan), there were none used as course texts. I have therefore a question and a proposal for all HABSBURG participants:

What published and in print literature or memoirs do you use for the 18th-19th century in EE? The only things I have used are Andric, _Bridge on the Drina_ (very popular - many students later tell me they have urged it on their parents and friends) and Singer, _Gimpel the Fool_ (less successful, because I didn't do a very good job with it).
Perhaps it would be worthwhile to gather support for (and information about) good material already available in English but out of print. I am always envious of colleagues in other fields who have a wealth of fascinating sources in paperback to assign. I would like to hear nominations for such sources which should be brought back into print for use in courses. Perhaps then someone (?) could attract a publisher's interest.

I have two:
-Jan Slomka, _From Serfdom to Self-Government: Memoirs of a Polish Village Mayor, 1842-1923_ (ed. William Rose). I used this in xerox, unable to find publisher for copyright. Students liked it a lot. -Jan Neruda, _Prague Tales_. I read in the _Independent_ about two years ago that T.G. Ash had arranged for Chatto to bring these out again in paper. Not available here; the company which owns American rights to Chatto's list is awfully hard to get ahold of.

Padraic Kenney
Dept. of History
U. of Colorado
kenneyp@spot.colorado.edu

Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 10:29:09 EST
Subject: Re: Primary Sources for Teaching

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Here, here! Let me second Padraic Kenney's observation and request:

I have just perused the syllabi on the Habsburg gopher. I was in search of primary sources for 19th century Eastern Europe, and noticed that there were none used as course texts. I have therefore a question and a proposal for all HABSBURG participants:
1. What published and in print literature or memoirs do you use for the 18th-19th century in EE?

A colleague who is teaching a course on nationalism asked me for suggestions for a "locus classicus" of 19th-century nationalism among the South Slavs that would be available to undergraduates without Balkan languages, preferably in English, but possibly in French or German. I could only come up with the recent Le nettoyage ethnique: Documents historiques sur une ideologie serbe, M. Grmek et al, eds. (Paris, 1993), obviously a problematic source.

Where would other members of the list have pointed him? What kinds of materials are available in English translation? Are there *any* convenient anthologies?

I hope this thread gets picked up and generates some good suggestions.

Toby Baldwin
Department of History
University of Chicago
t-baldwin@uchicago.edu

Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 13:33:53 EST
Subject: Re: Primary Sources for Teaching

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
We certainly do need some anthologies of documents (in English) on East Central European and Southeast European nationalisms.

I am plesed Toby Baldwin sent the list the Grmek, et al. citation for Serb nationalism, which I was unaware. The title, as Baldwin suggests, sounds like the collection is somewhat problematic.

Similarly problematic, though useful is the following book, which contains some documents as well as (Croatian) analysis:

Boze Covic, ed., Roots of Serbian Aggression: Debates/Documents/Cartograhic Reviews (Zagreb: Centar za stane jezike, 1993)

IN ENGLISH

There are some documents published in English on the early 20th century Serbian nationalist organizations Narodna Odbrana and the Black Hand. They are not published together as part of an anthology, however. I can send citations if anyone is interested.

Langdon Healy
Department of History
Indiana University
lhealy@ucs.indiana.edu

Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 21:22:08 EST
Subject: Re: Primary Sources for Teaching (fwd)

Dear Padraic, I sympathize with you, trying to find original sources for the period. Because my own research is on a group of young men condemned as "Jacobins" in 1795, I have been collecting and translating (for my own use, of course) their interrogations, self-defenses, etc. as well as the occasional relevant pamphlet. Now that a senior is writing her thesis on the "radical enlightenment milieu" in Vienna, and using all of my sources, I have gotten a German language scholar here to start on rough drafts of more pamphlets, having to do with Freemasonry, Joseph II, church-state issues, etc. Actually, some of this stuff is so very witty or interesting or moving, I have thought about translating it in a polished fashion for publication. I would be happy to send you some of the very rough stuff -- by post -- and it would take me a little while to find and choose some things for you. I'm frankly not sure if I'm the only one interested in this, and would like to know your reaction. It all has to do with the "Broschuerenflut" and "Jacobinism." Christine Mueller

Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 21:17:07 EST
Subject: Re: Primary sources for Teaching

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I got so frustrated by the lack of just such an adequate anthology that over the last fifteen years or so I've been collecting and sometimes translating my own. Here's the outline of a selection I have used on a course I taught a couple of times for the George Washington University Honors Program. I'd welcome suggestions for additions and subtractions...

Sincerely,

Hugh Agnew
agnewhl@gwuvm.gwu.edu
History Department, GWU
Hugh.Agnew@ruk.cuni.cz (sabbatical e-mail, til August 95)

Part One: Absolutism and Enlightenment

The Need for Austrian Reforms................Empress Maria Theresa

Letter to Officials (1783).......................Emperor Joseph II

A Defence of the Czech Language (1783)............Karel Hynek Tham

Political Law of the Polish Nation (1790)............Hugo Kollataj

The Polish Constitution of the Third of May (1791)...............

Supplex Libellus Valachorum (1791)...............................

Slavic-Bulgarian History.........................Paisi Hilendarski

Part Two: Reaction and Romanticism

Secret Memorandum to Tsar Alexander I (1820)............Metternich

Magyars, Germans and Slavs (1784-1791)............J. G. von Herder

On the Awakening of the Magyar

Tongue (1804)..............................Mihaly Csokonai

A Call (1836)....................................Mihaly Vorosmarty

On the Love of the Fatherland (1806)...................Jan Nejedly

The Daughter of Slava (1824)............................Jan Kollar

Slavic Reciprocity (1837)...............................Jan Kollar

Polish Messianism (1832)...........................Adam Mickiewicz

Introduction to Serbian Folk

Songs (1814)......................Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic

Croatian Illyrianism..................................Ljudevit Gaj

Three: Liberalism and Nationalism

Poland's Regeneration (1844).......................Joachim Lelewel

Fragments of a Political Program (1847)...........Istvan Szechenyi

Slav and Czech (1846)......................Karel Havlicek-Borovsky

Introduction to History of the Czech Nation in Bohemia

and Moravia (1848).......................Frantisek Palacky

Letter to Frankfurt (1848).......................Frantisek Palacky

Manifesto of the Prague Slavic Congress (1848)....................

From the Wiener Volksfreund (1848)................................

March 15 in Pest (1848).............................Sandor Petofi

Installation Speech as Croatian Ban (1848)..........Josip Jelacic

Speech to the Hungarian Diet (1848).................Lajos Kossuth

Part Four: Politics of Nation-Building and National Liberation

Greater Serbia (1844).............................Ilija Garasanin

Slavdom and the World of the

Future (ca. 1850)...........................L'udovit Stur

The Guarantees of the Power and Unity

of Austria (1859)...........................Jozsef Eotvos

Address to the Croatian

Sabor (1861)...............Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmajer

Yugoslavism (1860)...................................Franjo Racki

Address to the Hungarian Diet (1861)..................Ferenc Deak

The Idea of the Austrian State (1865)...........Frantisek Palacky

The Ausgleich of 1867............................................

The Hungarian Nationality Law (1868).............................

Speeches on Hungarian Policy.........................Istvan Tisza

Program of the Croatian Party of Pure Right (1893)...............

Program of the Hungarian Congress

of Nationalities (1895)..................................

Protest of the Non-Magyar Committee (1895).......................

The Serb-Croat Coalition (1905)..................................

Polish National Democracy (1904)....................Roman Dmowski

Polish Socialism (1907)..........................Ignacy Daszynski

Linz Program of Austrian German Nationalists (1882)..............

Austrian Reichsrat Session of 26 November 1897...................

The Czech Question (1895)........................Tomas G. Masaryk

Whitsuntide Program (1899).......................................

The Brunn Program of the Austrian Social-Democrats (1899)........

The Imperial Ottoman Firman Relative to the Establishment

of the Bulgarian Exarchate (1870)........................

The Sole Salvation Lies in Revolution (1875)........Khristo Botev

Serbian Socialism (1875)........................Svetozar Markovic

The Macedonian Revolutionary Movement (1903).....................

Part Five: Power Politics, War and Revolution

Conference of Reichstadt (1876)..................................

Austro-Russian Balkan Agreement (1897)...........................

Annexation of Bosnia-Hercegovina (1908)..........................

Depositions of Sarajevo Assassins (1914).........................

Supplementary Memorandum on the Yugoslav Question (1916).........

Activities of the Yugoslav Committee.........................Ivan Mestrovic

Czechoslovak Activity Abroad in World War I.........Tomas Masaryk

Memorandum for Emperor Charles (1917)..............Gyula Szilassy

The Czechoslovak Declaration of Independence (1918)..............

Proclamation of the Ukrainian National Council (1918)............

Speech on Foreign and Nationality Policy (1919)..........Bela Kun

Czechoslovak Pretensions to German

Territory (1918).............................Rudolf Laun

Six: Independence, New War, and New Revolution

The Historic Mission of Hungary and of the States

Aggrandized to Her Detriment (1921)........Albert Apponyi

Thoughts on Government (1926-1930)................Josef Pilsudksi

The Unsolved Slovak Question (1933)..............................

The German Problem in Czechoslovakia (1936)..........Edvard Benes

Royal Coup d'Etat (1929).........................King Alexander I

The Croatian Ustasa Movement.........................Ante Pavelic

A Few Remarks on Democracy (1937).........Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

Slovak Populist Ideology (1943)..................Stefan Polakovic

Serbian Fascism...................................Dmitrije Ljotic

The Warsaw Uprising (1944).......................................

The Czechoslovak "Kosice" Program (1945).........................

Part Seven: Nationalism and Communism

The Tito-Stalin Split (1948).....................................

Extracts from the Slansky Trial (1951)...........................

Address to the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (1956)....................

Demands of Hungarian Students (1956).............................

Szabad Nep's View of Hungarian Events (1956).....................

Rumania's "Declaration of Independence" (1964)...................

The "Two Thousand Words" Manifesto (1968)..........Ludvik Vaculik

The "Brezhnev Doctrine" (1968)...................................

The Invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968)...........Nicolae Ceausescu

The Committee for the Defence of the Workers (1977)..............

Charter 77 Declaration (1977)....................................

Message to the Polish Nation....................Pope John Paul II

The Gdansk Agreements (1980).....................................

Hungarian Opposition Documents...................................

Trends in Yugoslavia.............................................

New Year's Message to the People of Czechoslovakia (1990)........................Vaclav Havel

Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 21:18:35 EST
From:KarenHob@aol.com
Subject: Re: Primary Sources for Teaching

Habsburg sources, 1860's:

The following could be less typical side texts for study of the Habsburg lands in the 19th century:

An interesting source on peasant life in Habsburg Bohemia is Bozena Nemcova's "Granny", Scenes from Country Life, Translated by Edith Pargeter, Greenwood Press. Some might think some parts of it are a little "corny" but over all it paints an interesting picture of a middle class family rising from the peasantry. It also covers a lot of the "folk culture" and "class" distinctions in rural areas.

Jerome Blum's "The European Peasantry from the 15th to the 19th Century" (Service Center for Teachers of History, American Historical Assn, Washington, DC), and also his "Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria 1815-1848" cover changes in tools, proceedures and land use and labor pools as subsistence farming was replaced by farming for profitable surplusm, and as labor changed from "robot" to hired hands.

There is a movie: "Colonel Redl" that may be inspired by "Lt. Gustl." It follows the career of a commoner through military school and into the Army where most of his associations are with the nobility who make up the bulk of the officer corps. He is estranged from his family and is embarrassed when a sister comes to visit in her peasant clothes. He gains the "protection" of a General in the inner circle at court. But when the General retires he is "set up" by those who think he is an outsider still and made the scapegoat for a situation contrived by the Kaiser. He commits suicide because he is convinced it is for the good of the army. The film was at Colorado Springs Blockbuster Video last spring. In German with subtitles. (I have an 8mm copy.)

An interesting source for discussion is the Diderot Encyclopedia. Many of the illustrations of trades and agricultural practices were applicable to 19th century Habsburg lands. Such things as whether or not workers and miners have on shoes can make students look closer at other details of daily life.

Avril Lansdell,'s very short illustrated booklet "Occupational Costume" also helps bring to life the 18th and 19th century workers in many trades, male and female. The variety of trades in itself is worth discussion.

Schinkler's "My Youth in Vienna" covers upper middle class life in the home of a noted physician and attendance at the university as well as military service.

Demographics indicate a very high mortality rate 1840-1852 in some of the Habsburg lands.

(The impact of germ theory after 1860 is something I would like to read about...does anyone have a source?)

There are parts of Emmanuel Le Roy LaDurie's "Times of Feast, Times of Famine" that have touching quotes from journals and letters about the "little ice age" that brought uncertain harvests for almost 200 years. The 1846-47 famine in Habsburg lands resulted from one of the weather abberations (newspaper reports from Mies in Bohemia -- not in this book -- describe the food riots there during that time--first grain failed, then potatoes were 50% rotten in the ground. I understand there were also bread riots in Vienna ). There was also a severe famine in 1830 (John D. Post, "The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World" -- somewhat dry statistical study, but interesting in its analysis of nutritional changes impacting population.)

William H. McNeill also covers some of the 19th century food shortages in his book "Plagues and Peoples" (Anchor Press/Doubleday) -- chapter: The Hungry Forties. He points out that Malaria and Yellow Fever and Smallpox were finall y contained but Cholera arrived after 1830 -- 250,000 died in Hungary in 1831. He discusses the effects of better transport networks on the spread of disease. He also considers the lack of acquired immunity of the hardy peasant who goes to the city to seek employment during that period -- and promply dies of "city disease."

The "Weiner Zeitung", one of the first newspapers in Vienna, is archived at the University of Colorado on microfiche. There are probably a lot of stories to be found there about the demolition of the city walls and construction of the "Ring", about the war in 1864, about mobilization for 1866 and the defeat. I can't remember if the paper would go back as far as 1848-49 and the war in Hungary or cover the war in Italy in 1859. The microfiche were not available on ILL on my last inquiry. They are also at Lib.Cong.

If anyone has done any translations of newspaper stories from the period I would like to know if the translation is available.

James Laver's "Manners and Morals in the Age of Optimism, 1848-1914" does not cover Habsburg lands specifically -- most examples cited are UK and France -- but it still can apply. The chapters on poverty and prostitution and on women's roles and on recreation, relaxation and dissipations are probably generally applicable throughout Europe. The illustrations are very well-selected and cover some events that would be subjects of conversation in all European capitals at the time.

Some junvenile picture books and Time/Life books on the 19th century railroads, steamships, and other subjects are concise presentations of points of discussion. Juvenile books on Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary are often very well illustrated and the pictures are sometimes as informative as a whole chapter in a text. Although they do not provide much depth, they give an overview of the lands and help the student picture the people about whom he is studying.

I have a translation of some of the pages of Adalbert Stifter's "Die Mappe Meines Urgrossvaters Schilderungen Briefe" -- 8 1/2 pages describing Vienna. Besides this "essay" section, the book views family life for a jewish book publisher, and it has almost 300 pages of exerpts from personal letters that talk about business, family considerations, epidemics, opinions... Not all are significant but taken together they create a good picture of this family.

Karen Hobbs

EDITOR'S NOTE: To this I would add Helen Liebel-Weckowicz's reminder of Macartney's paperback compendium on the _Habsburg and Hohenzollern Dynasties in the 17th and 18th Centuries_ which is, I believe out of print. -CI

Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 08:01:55 EST

Subject: Primary Sources

I've found the listings of sources in Eastern European history particularly interesting. Does anyone know if Robin Okey's book is slated for a 2nd edition in the near future? I used it as a text 2 years ago, but it goes only up to 1985. In terms of primary sources, if you want something that will (guaranteed) send the students rolling on the floor, try this: Mark Twain, "Stirring Times in Austria," in THE WRITINGS OF MARK TWAIN, Author's National Edition, Harper, 1899-1913, vol. 22, pp. 200-249. Twain was in Vienna during the 1897 Badeni Language Ordinance controversy; Bill Slottman at Berkeley used to read excerpts to his classes when he thought the students needed a lift, and Twain's descriptions of the Reichsrat in action are truly memorable (to say the least)... --Gary Shanafelt--

Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 22:43:26 EST

Subject: on-line source project

Jim Brown recently observed that:

I've been amazed by all the translating and compiling people have been doing on their own. One of the purposes of our gopher site was to collect such teaching materials. I hope that people will consider submitting these things to the list so that others of us can benefit from the work that goes into such compilations. Pretty please.

Quite coincidentally, H-Net's coordinator, Richard Jensen, had just written us about a parallel idea being considered by H-German, writing:

Dan Rogers over at H-German, is enthusiastically working on a clever idea, but is nervous (I think) about approaching you). I think HABSBURG may want to collaborate. Notably, volunteers from among the subscribers will identify and translate into English important documents from German history. H-Net will assemble them and put them on line, so that any teacher, anywhere, can construct an anthology of texts for classes. With 50 people contributing 20 pages per year, in a short while they will have a highly useful teaching tool, of permanent value, at very little cost. The plan (G-TEXT) is brilliant: cheap, easy, collaborative, net-oriented, practical, highly useful, highly visible, and easily understood. Probably it would translate very well into other fields, like Latin-American, Russian, etc.

Although it seems sensible to collaborate with H-German, the recent rash of submissions about the need for English-language primary sorces in Habsburg and East-Central European history has prompted Jim Niessen to advocate launching a parallel project of our very own. Of course, some of our material (most notably that which pertains to the Austro-German hereditary lands) could be shared with H-German, but we could simultaneously begin amassing translated source material for the whole Danubian region. In the next few days Jim and I will be focusing on the awesome possibilities that such a project would offer for all of us at a time when so many books we might employ in class are either too expensive or out of print -- or simply non-existant.

Your input is, as always, most welcome.

Date: Sun, 2 Apr 1995 15:01:37 -0500
Subject: Primary Sources for Teaching

I hope the list members will pardon me for re-opening this thread on primary sources for teaching which seemed to have closed down two or three weeks ago. I have been wanting to put an additional suggestion before the list, but have been too busy to do so until now.

Opening the thread originally, Padraic Kenney (University of Colorado) noted how little Eastern European source material seems to be available in English. He asked what others used and suggested that we might bring some pressure to bear on publishers to reprint some difficult to find OP titles. Hugh Agnew (George Washington University) responded that just because there seemed to be so few decent source readings available, he had over the years created his own working anthology. He posted a list of the texts and asked the list to suggest possible additions.

Now here's my suggestion which I put before the list for discussion. If Hugh Agnew does not have immediate plans to publish his anthology, perhaps he would be willing to post some or all of his translations on the HABSBURG gopher. Perhaps other members of the list also have such working translations that they have used for their classes and would be willing to share with the rest of us. In addition to the syllabi which are already on the HABSBURG gopher, such translations would be a valuable resource that I'm sure all the list members would appreciate.

I know that questions of copyright and intellectual property have already been raised with regard to the syllabi on the HABSBURG gopher. For that reason I append a two message exchange from another list (MEDIEV-L, I think) which addresses (though perhaps it doesn't fully resolve) the problem.

What do the rest of the list members think?

Toby Baldwin
Department of History
The University of Chicago
t-baldwin@uchicago.edu

Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 07:42:58 EST

Subject: Copyright

I need some advice. As book costs rise and student funds fall, I've gone more and more to translating sources myself. I once stored them on disk, copied what I wanted for any particular term, and let someone like Kinko's sell it for me. Now we're experimenting with an electronic reserve system in which students can access my material from all over campus, read it on screen, download it to their own disks, or print it out. The problem is that it looks as if my material will be hanging out there on WWW for public consumption, ripe for picking.

I'm happy to let anyone use my translations but don't want them snatched up for commercial uses. Can someone who knows this sort of thing write me privately and inform me on how I must go about protecting my material?

David Burr

Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 12:43:54 -0500
From: "Martin Irvine, Georgetown University"
Subject: Re: Copyright

David,
You still retain intellectual property rights and legal copyright to anything that you publish or disseminate. A notice to that effect should be appended to electronic files. The burden of compliance then falls to the user, not the distributor. Etext still requires users to respect author's rights, and if you're supplying educational materials for free, then there should be no problem with wide educational/scholarly use. (This is our policy for the Labyrinth project.) Plagiarism can still be detected by the scholarly community quite easily--even more easily--with electronic media, if that is a concern for you.

There's a discussion list just for copyright issues hosted by CNI (Coalition for Networked Information). Get info at cni.org (both WWW and gopher), if you'd like to see how these issues are being discussed. I hope the WWW community benefits from your work soon!

--Martin Irvine

Date: Sun, 2 Apr 1995 15:02:09 -0500
From: "T.O. Baldwin"
Subject: Primary Sources for Teaching

Prof. Agnew-

I am sending you privately a suggestion which I have also posted to the HABSBURG list at large. Because some weeks ago you posted a long list of your own translations which you have used in teaching, I thought you might be willing to share some or all of them with the rest of us by putting them out on the HABSBURG gopher. I hope my suggestion isn't too forward. The generosity of your earlier post suggested that you might be open to the idea.

I am appending a copy of my message to the list at large.

Toby Baldwin
t-baldwin@uchicago.edu

What do the rest of the list members think?

Toby Baldwin
Department of History
The University of Chicago
t-baldwin@uchicago.edu

Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 07:42:58 EST
From: David burr
Subject: Copyright

David Burr

Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 12:43:54 -0500
From: "Martin Irvine, Georgetown University"
Subject: Re: Copyright

--Martin Irvine

Date: Sun, 2 Apr 1995 21:51:14 -0500
From: "T.O. Baldwin"
Subject: Mis-Sent "Primary Source" Message

I have been informed by Charlie Ingrao that a copy of my "Primary Sources for Teaching" with a personal message attached intended for Hugh Agnew may have been distributed instead to the list as a whole. If so, please ignore the 2nd copy. I apologize to the list and to Prof. Agnew for my careless double posting.

Toby Baldwin

Department of History

University of Chicago

t-baldwin@uchicago.edu

Date: Sun, 2 Apr 1995 20:58:50 EST
From: Charles Ingrao
Subject: Toby Baldwin's text proposal

Jim Niessen and I want to thank Toby Baldwin for his posting. He and many other HABSBURG subscribers should be pleased to know that we have been quietly working on compiling a collection of documents (especially translated texts) that can be made available thru the HABSBURG gopher. First, however, we're looking for someone who can coordinate the project. After that we will begin compiling the texts that have already been amassed by various HABSBURG members before turning to those sources that can be incorporated in our gopher without violating copyright (such as translations published over 75 years ago). At some point we may want to put together a board of up to a dozen HABSBURG members with the linguistic skills to assist in the translation of documents from each of the region's languages.

Although we have already fielded some offers to HABSBURG members, Jim and I are always open to volunteers....

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