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Negotiating National Equality in the 
Austrian Silesian Diet 1905-1914 
 

Paula Krajnik 

 

Abstract 

At the turn of the twentieth century, nationalized conflicts affected all levels of 
politics in the Habsburg monarchy. Since the 1890s, Polish and Czech members of the 
Austrian Silesian provincial diet demanded equality with Austria’s German-speaking 
citizens, granting them the Basic Law as two of the crownlands’ recognized nationalities. 
With the Moravian Compromise of 1905, which attempted to solve the national conflict 
between Czechs and Germans and ensured national equality on a provincial level, Czechs 
and Poles of Silesia called for electoral and language law reforms of a similar model. Despite 
many years of attempts, the Silesian diet found no national compromise. This article will 
provide an overview of the struggle for national equality and attempts at a national 
compromise in Silesia from the Moravian Compromise in 1905 until the closure of the 
provincial diet in 1914. By analyzing the stenographic minutes of the Silesian provincial 
diet, this article traces the attempts at national equalization and pacification, how members 
of the provincial parliament debated national equalization and pacification, and aims to 
identify the reasons for their failure of these attempts. Reforms of the administrative 
language laws and school politics to resolve national conflicts never concretized, although 
national conflicts heavily characterized these topics. The Viennese central government 
rejected two electoral reform drafts for their lack of measures to solve the national conflicts; 
further drafts never materialized. A Silesian Compromise never became realized in part due 
to the unwillingness and lack of interest to find a compromise on the side of the diet’s 
German majority, which was easily able to outvote its Slavic minority and refused many of 
their demands out of fear of losing their hegemony. 

 
 
 
 

 

 
 

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Introduction 
 

The name Silesia is primarily connected with the historically Prussian or present-day 
Polish province, not with the region of Silesia that became part of the present-day Czech 
Republic. Until 1918, this small region was part of the Habsburg Monarchy and was an 
autonomous region in Bohemian Crownlands. The Bohemian Crown acquired the whole 
region of Silesia in 1331, and as such, the region came under Habsburg rule in 1526.1 When 
Emperor Charles VI of the Holy Roman Empire died in 1740, leaving the throne to his 
daughter Maria Theresa, Frederick II of Prussia issued an ultimatum demanding Silesia in 
exchange for his approval of the Austrian succession. When Austria declined the ultimatum, 
Prussian troops invaded Silesia, starting a series of three wars during the years from 1740 
to 1763. Eventually, the majority of Silesia became Prussian; only the duchy of Teschen 
(Cieszyn/Tešín), parts of the duchies of Troppau (Opava) and Jägerndorf (Krnov), and part of 
the principality of Neiße (Nysa) remained in the Habsburg monarchy.2 These were districts 
of the Margravate of Moravia until 1850 when Austrian Silesia became a crownland of its 
own: the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia.3 Silesia was the smallest crownland in the 
monarchy and one of its most densely populated. With industrialization came a decline in 
agriculture and an increase in coal mining.4 The population of Austrian Silesia was diverse, 
consisting mainly of German, Polish, and Czech-speaking peoples.5  

The national awakening and industrialization of the nineteenth century led to full 
national movements building their own networks and programs with their respective 
demands. Those demands differed within every national movement, but at their cores were 
similar interests: more autonomy for their nations or at least national and linguistic 

5 While eastern Silesia was dominated by Poles and the west by Germans, the central region was dominated by 
Czechs except for the provincial capital Troppau. The Austrian census from 1900 shows that of the 663.470 people 
living in Silesia, 47 percent were German-speaking, 30 percent Polish-speaking and 22 percent Czech-speaking. 
Hence, the proportion of the Slavic-speaking population was slightly higher than 50 percent. This quota increased by 
three percent in the 1910 census. These numbers do not reflect personal national affiliation or heritage but the 
language of daily use, equated in Austrian censuses with nationality. The language of daily use indicated national 
assertiveness or hegemony rather than the population’s actual national composition. Therefore, these categories 
remain contested as accurate representations of nationality. See Jiří Kořalka, Tschechen im Habsburgerreich und in 
Europa 1815-1914: Sozialgeschichtliche Zusammenhänge der neuzeitlichen Nationsbildung und der 
Nationalitätenfrage in den Böhmischen Ländern, Schriftenreihe des Österreichischen Ost- und 
Südosteuropa-Instituts, Bd. 18 (Wien: München: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik; R. Oldenbourg, 1991), 126-30 
and Emil Brix, Die Umgangssprachen in Altösterreich zwischen Agitation und Assimilation: Die Sprachenstatistik in 
den Zisleithanischen Volkszählungen, 1880 Bis 1910, Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Neuere Geschichte 
Österreichs, Bd. 72 (Wien: Böhlau, 1982), 401-3. 

4 Great Britain Foreign Office, ed., Austrian Silesia, vol. 4, Handbooks Prepared under the Direction of the Historical 
Section of the Foreign Office (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1920), 6, 26-32. 

3 Dan Gawrecki, “Der Schlesische Landtag,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918. Band VII/2. Verfassung und 
Parlamentarismus. Die regionalen Repräsentativkörperschaften., ed. Adam Wandruszka, Peter Urbanitsch, and 
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. VII/2, Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918 (Wien: 
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), 2105-7. 

2 Brigitte Mazohl, “Vom Tod Karls VI. bis zum Wiener Kongress,” in Geschichte Österreichs, ed. Thomas 
Winkelbauer (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2015), 293-305. 

1 Great Britain Foreign Office, ed., Austrian Silesia, vol. 4, Handbooks Prepared under the Direction of the Historical 
Section of the Foreign Office (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1920), 1-15. 

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equality. Many Germans6 of the Habsburg Monarchy simultaneously feared losing their 
rights to other nations and advocated for a centralist unitarian state.7 The contradiction of 
interests led to conflicts mainly carried out on a political level, but also in cultural and even 
everyday life, especially the conflicts of language, as many people could not communicate 
with the authorities in their native language or send their children to schools according to 
their language.8 National conflicts could manifest themselves in actions such as obstruction 
in the parliament, protests, boycotts, and even the destruction of schools.9 To comply with 
Hungarian demands for more independence, the Austrian Monarchy took a drastic measure, 
the Ausgleich (Compromise), by administratively dividing the country in two parts along the 
Leitha River in 1867 into two states. To the east, Hungary was now its own part of the 
monarchy, with its own parliament and authorities. The part west of the Leitha never 
received an official name; Austria and Cisleithania became commonly used synonyms, and it 
remained a multinational state under German hegemony.10 While this compromise offered a 
solution or at least appeasement to the conflicts with Hungary, it created an even bigger 
demand in other national movements for similar compromises. Because Article 19 of the 
Basic Law on the General Rights of Citizens from 1867 proclaimed the equality of all peoples 
of Cisleithania, national movements demanded that the law be fulfilled. National conflicts 
were primarily a struggle for equality in a German-dominated multinational state.11 

In 1905, an attempt to grant the Czech population of the Margravate Moravia more 
equality and accurate political representation on a provincial level succeeded. The solution 
was a national compromise providing personal autonomy to all people of Moravia since that 
autonomy could not be fixed territorially. The compromise worked through reforms in 
electoral laws and new language laws concerning schools and authorities. The new electoral 
laws drastically changed the national make-up of the Moravian Diet. By separating the 
electorates by nationality (except for the curia of landowners who considered themselves 
nationally indifferent), the electoral laws attempted to represent the national proportions of 

11 Gerald Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten in der Verfassung und Verwaltung Österreichs, 
1848-1918 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1985), 53-60. 

10 Börries Kuzmany, “Habsburg Austria: Experiments in Non-Territorial Autonomy,” Ethnopolitics 15, no. 1 (January 
2016): 43-44, https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2015.1101838. 

9 Pieter M. Judson, Habsburg: Geschichte eines Imperiums: 1740 - 1918, trans. Michael Müller, 3., durchgesehene 
Auflage (München: C.H. Beck, 2019), 347–53. 

8 Bruckmüller, Österreichische Geschichte, 420-39. 

7 Ernst Bruckmüller, Österreichische Geschichte: von der Urgeschichte bis zur Gegenwart (Wien Köln Weimar: 
Böhlau Verlag, 2019), 418–21; Gerald Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung Der Nationalitäten in Der Verfassung Und 
Verwaltung Österreichs, 1848-1918 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1985), 1–3. 

6 In the Habsburg monarchy, “German” meant, first and foremost, German-speaking. As German was the hegemonial 
language of the monarchy, many spoke and assimilated to German. The Jewish population poses as a prominent 
example; the Jewish population was acknowledged as a religious group but could not declare a Jewish native 
language or nationality and, therefore, was mostly identified and counted as part of the German population. The 
original German movement of the Habsburg monarchy was historically founded and not ethnically. With the 
emergence and success of other ethnic national movements, the German movement became mostly defensive, fearing 
being disadvantaged by the equalization of other nationals. A growing part of the German movement started to found 
itself on German ethnicity only, excluding other groups such as the Jewish population. See Brix, Die 
Umgangssprachen in Altösterreich zwischen Agitation und Assimilation, 403-408 and Jeremy King, “Who Is Who? 
National Classification in Imperial Austria, 1867–1914,” The Journal of Modern History 96, no. 2 (June 1, 2024): 
295–98, https://doi.org/10.1086/730026 and Ernst Bruckmüller, Österreichische Geschichte: von der Urgeschichte 
bis zur Gegenwart (Wien Köln Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2019), 436-437. 

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the crownland. The electoral laws determined the distribution of seats by nationality.12 
Czech and German became both official languages of the margravate; local authorities that 
could not provide their services in both languages now had a translation bureau at the 
provincial executive committee (provincial government) available free of charge. Children 
were to frequent schools according to their native language; thus, Czech children had to 
attend only Czech and German children only German schools.13 The goal in all sectors was 
pacification through personal separation. This did not mean a territorial redistribution and 
separation of population, but rather the separation of institutions and administration such 
as school boards or the electorates of the provincial diets by nationality. To separate the 
electorates, local authorities compiled national cadasters (registries) based on their 
perception of which nation a voter belonged to. These claims could be challenged by the 
person in question but also by third parties. Nationalists set out to get as many people as 
possible on their respective registries. Further, nationalists tried to remove people they 
perceived as not belonging to their nationality and national ambivalent people from their 
registries. To achieve that, nationalists objected to those people being on their registries. In 
case of an objection, the authorities had to assess the nationality of the person in question 
by interrogation. If not satisfied with the authorities’ assessments, people could challenge it 
up to the Imperial Court of Justice, which happened regularly and was solved through a 
combination of self-declaration and objectivized criteria, so the declarations were never 
determined only externally.14 Although those measures seem to complicate the situation 
even more at first glance, the Moravian Compromise eased the national conflict in the 
crownland and provided more equality to the Czech population.15 

Silesia was no exception to the national conflicts, as it contained at least three 
nationalities with even more different national and regional movements. The Polish and 
Czech national movements highly influenced and supported their respective counterparts in 
Silesia. The Silesian Polish and Czech national movements expanded and cooperated in the 
last two decades of the nineteenth century. Though, in more diverse parts of eastern Silesia, 
they competed, especially as Czech agitation increased there. The German movement was 
liberal and moderately nationalist but started to radicalize as the other movements in the 
province grew.16 With Silesia split between the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, both 
national and regional movements targeted the population. In eastern Silesia, which was (as 
already stated) more diverse in part due to immigration from neighboring Galicia, the group 
of so-called Slunzaks formed, who identified neither as Czech nor as Polish, and spoke their 

16 Tomasz Kamusella, Silesia and Central European Nationalisms: The Emergence of National and Ethnic Groups in 
Silesia, 1848-1918, Central European Studies (West Lafayette, Ind: Purdue University Press, 2007), 213-23. 

15 The success of the Moravian compromise posed as an example for other crownlands. In 1909, the diet of the 
crownland of Bukovina achieved a national compromise. A similar electoral law was established in Bosnia in 1910. 
However, the defining criteria for the electoral cadasters was not nationality but rather religion, with separate 
Orthodox, Muslim, Catholic, and Jewish electorates. A Galician Compromise between Poles and Ukrainians was 
signed in 1914, though it never came to fruition because of the breakout of World War I. See Kuzmany, “Habsburg 
Austria,” 59-61. 

14 Börries Kuzmany, “Objectivising National Identity: The Introduction of National Registers in the Late Habsburg 
Empire,” Nations and Nationalism 29, no. 3 (July 2023): 978–80, https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12950. 

13 Glassl, Der Mährische Ausgleich, 217-26. 

12 Horst Glassl, Der Mährische Ausgleich (München: Fides-Verl.ges, 1967), 211-15; Kuzmany, “Habsburg Austria,” 
47-50. 

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own Slavic idiom.17 Especially from the perspective of local politics, it is hard to tell on 
which scale the national conflicts affected the population and to which extent people were 
leaning into national indifference. 

Internal conflicts of national movements, regionalist movements, national 
indifference, or other perspectives of nationality did not really come up for discussion in the 
Silesian provincial diet. However, the three “main nationalities” (Germans, Poles, Czechs) 
were represented in the diet, and their conflicts were also carried out there. Mainly, the 
diet’s underrepresented Slavic minority, consisting of Polish and Czech deputies, struggled 
for their representation in attempted electoral reforms that should have become the 
cornerstone for a national compromise in Silesia.  

Attempted Reforms of Electoral Laws 
 

The provincial diets of the Cisleithanian crownlands were established in 1861 as a 
means of self-government in the sectors of agriculture, schools, infrastructure, and the 
provincial economy.18 The diets were organized in electoral classes (curias): at least one 
curia representing the great landowners, one for towns and the chambers of commerce, and 
one curia for the rural municipalities. Further, the diets held ex officio seats for provincial 
dignitaries like the rector of the university and the archbishops and bishops of the 
crownland. From 1902 on, many crownlands established a general curia that included all 
men who did not meet the minimum taxation rate (Steuerleistung) required to obtain 
suffrage in the other curias. However, Silesia never implemented a general curia. The ratio 
of people represented was uneven to their representatives. While one-third of the members 
represented a minority of landowners, the chambers of commerce, and the clergy, the other 
two-thirds represented the majority of the province’s population. The total number of 
members depended on the size of the crownland. By law, suffrage was not restricted to men, 
as women from the curia of great landowners were allowed to vote. Furthermore, the right 
to vote depended on a minimum taxation rate that voters had to meet.19  

To settle national conflicts in elections, many crownlands reassigned communal 
borders to achieve more linguistically homogeneous voting districts. However, ethnic or 
national belonging did not necessarily coincide with physical borders. Therefore, granting 
personal autonomy everywhere through separated electorates and more realistic 
representation of national proportions became one of the main objectives of national 
compromises negotiated in the provincial diets.20  

Silesia’s provincial diet met once or twice each year for sessions of varying durations. 
It consisted of 31 members, 17 of which were representatives of the towns and the rural 
population. Due to the rigid curia system, the deputies of those two classes were not very 

20 Melik, “Zusammensetzung und Wahlrecht der Cisleithanischen Landtage,” 1334-36. 

19 Vasilij Melik, “Zusammensetzung und Wahlrecht der Cisleithanischen Landtage,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 
1848-1918. Band VII/2. Verfassung und Parlamentarismus. Die regionalen Repräsentativkörperschaften., ed. Adam 
Wandruszka, Peter Urbanitsch, and Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. VII/2, Die 
Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918 (Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), 1313-31. 

18 Jana Osterkamp, “Vielfalt ordnen: das föderale Europa der Habsburgermonarchie (Vormärz bis 1918),” 
Veröffentlichungen des Collegium Carolinum 141 (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck et Ruprecht, 2020), 193-203. 

17 Kamusella, Silesia and Central European Nationalisms, 119-21. 

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socially diverse and consisted mainly of lawyers, teachers, engineers, medical doctors, or 
journalists.21 Until 1890, when three Polish and three Czech representatives were elected, 
the diet had almost no Slavic members. Those six Slavic seats remained unchanged until 
1914 and represented more than 50 percent of the population according to the national 
proportion.22 For these reasons, Slavic demands often failed, as they had few supporters, 
while the majority did not depend on Slavic votes. 

The main source for analyzing the attempts and negotiations of a reform of Silesian 
electoral laws are the minutes of the forty-second to the forty-fifth legislative periods of the 
Silesian Diet from October 1905 to March 1914. In this time span, the diet debated and 
sanctioned two reform drafts that never took effect, as the central government in Vienna did 
not approve of both drafts. The diet negotiated and prepared a third draft of a new electoral 
law, which never materialized before the outbreak of World War I in July 1914.  

Creating a new electoral law was already on the Silesian diet’s agenda for the 
forty-second legislative period in the autumn of 1905. Right from the start, Slavic members 
criticized their underrepresentation in the parliamentary electoral reform commission, but 
their objections were not heard except for assigning one German and one Slavic substitute 
for the commission.23 During the following session, the reform plans were elaborated by the 
electoral commission and were not discussed in the provincial parliament. Municipalities 
handed petitions to the commission requesting a “change of the electoral law reform,” 
mainly by Slavic deputies; only one was handed in by a German, pleading for a separate 
curia of industries.24 Those petitions are a revealing source to evaluate national activists’ 
interest in electoral reforms. With every attempt almost exclusively Slavic diet members 
handed over countless petitions for the “change of the electoral law reform” or the “quick 
execution of the electoral law reform.” These petitions imply the interest of municipalities, 
people, and the Slavic deputies’ efforts to show their prioritization of electoral reforms.25 
Throughout all negotiations, the main arguments on both sides remained similar. The Slavic 
deputies referred to Article 19 of the Basic Law, demanding equal rights as it proclaimed. 
The Slavic deputy Johann Michejda insisted that their equalization could no longer be 
prevented26: “Gentlemen, do you believe that these people, once their national idea has 
awakened, will allow themselves to be held back in any state – least of all in the state of 
Austria, where equal rights are at least still on paper in the Basic Law?”27 

Meanwhile, German petitioners had other interests. German members were mostly 
defensive, indicating their fears of losing their privileges. The main argument was based on 
the status quo. Silesia flourished under German hegemony culturally and economically; 

27 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 519. This translation and all the following ones are by the author from the original 
German. 

26 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 515-520. 
25 SMSD, 44th Period (1909-1910), 654-655. 

24 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 49; 42d Period (1905), 28-30; 42d Period (1905) 80- 81; 42d Period (1905), 113; 42d 
Period (1905), 467. 

23 Stenographic Minutes of the Silesian Diet (further cited as SMSD) 42d Legislative Period (1905), 6-8; 42d Period 
(1905), 28-30. 

22 Kořalka, Tschechen im Habsburgerreich und in Europa 1815-1914, 164-65. 
21 Gawrecki, “Der Schlesische Landtag,” 2107-14. 

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hence, nothing should be changed in the current state of affairs.28 German deputies also 
argued Silesia’s financial success under German hegemony and claimed that the German 
population contributed more taxes, thus justifying their privilege.29 German diet members 
rated Slavic requests for consideration of their concerns or persistence on the legally 
granted equality as attempts to impose their will on the diet’s majority. Generally, many 
German deputies claimed quite paternalistically that the diet’s majority always included its 
Slavic minority and that they acted on their behalf as well. Simultaneously, many German 
deputies depicted Slavic protests and complaints as ungrateful and impertinent.30  

In November 1905, the provincial diet negotiated the final draft of the new electoral 
law. The Slavic deputies contested the draft because it contained no measures against 
national inequality. To guarantee realistic national proportions in the provincial diet, Slavic 
deputies proposed an electoral law similar to the Moravian one or even demanded the 
introduction of universal suffrage in the crownland.31 Slavic diet members saw general, 
direct, and equal suffrage introduced in 1907 for the Imperial Council, the central 
parliament in Vienna, as a solution to all national and social conflicts in Silesia. However, the 
negotiations over the reforms never even approached such a drastic change. Many Slavic 
deputies saw the struggles for national and social equality as closely intertwined and thus 
advocated such matters.32 This viewpoint is visible in their acceptance of the 1908 draft, 
which did not include national measures. However, all Slavic members supported this draft 
because it would have at least introduced suffrage for a larger social group.33  

Slavic deputies also criticized two planned new seats in eastern Silesian districts, 
fearing they would become two more German seats. The diet’s German majority refused the 
request from the Slavic minority to nationally regulate those seats. Although all Slavic 
deputies voted against the 1905 draft of the electoral law and requested its revision before 
the next legislative period, the concerns of a minority of six representatives were easily 
outvoted by a majority of 22 votes, and the draft passed.34 The Viennese central government 
did not sanction the reform and disclosed that new laws should ameliorate the crownland’s 
national conflicts based on an agreement of all national parties.35 

The next reform of electoral law was proposed in 1908 after the failure of the 
previous one. Likewise, the new draft did not attempt any national compromise. This new 
attempt at reform sought to expand the Silesian diet to fifty seats, rename the curia of rural 
municipalities to include new industrial towns, and introduce compulsory voting.36 Despite 
criticism, the diet accepted this draft of the new electoral law unanimously. The Slavic 
deputies acknowledged, again showing their concern for social issues, that additional seats 
would represent people who had not been represented up to that point. Both sides were not 
really satisfied with this reform and perceived it as a temporary agreement to appease 

36 SMSD, 43d Period (1908), 1337-1341. 
35 Gawrecki, “Der Schlesische Landtag,” 2110. 
34 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 537-557. 
33 SMSD, 43d Period (1908), 1354-1356; 44th Period (1909-1910), 6. 
32 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 514-519. 
31 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 514-520. 
30 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 525-530; 45th Period (1912), 808-815. 
29 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 525-533; 44th Period (1909-1910), 131-132. 
28 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 525-530. 

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conflicts in the crownland that should be solved later by the next reform.37 Again, the central 
government rejected the new electoral law, anticipating an extensive compromise in 
Silesia.38 

In 1909, a new Silesian diet was elected based on the old electoral law; this, its 
national structure remained similar. This diet negotiated a new electoral law reform 
between 1909 and 1914, reaching an agreement to prepare a draft of the new law only in 
1913. Debates around the electoral reform became even harsher and more polemic than 
before, as Slavic deputies pressed for their equality while the German majority again 
wanted to maintain the status quo. The Slavic side accused the Germans of not being 
interested in any compromise and of intentionally delaying the electoral reform. The 
legislative period already started with dispute when the diet’s Slavic minority requested the 
election of a parliamentary electoral reform commission, unaware or uninformed that the 
German majority already submitted such a request. The German deputies perceived the 
Slavic request and its justification as allegations of disinterest toward the German side. In 
the twenty-second session, a Polish member of the electoral reform commission claimed 
that he was not invited to a meeting of the electoral reform commission. Instances like these 
indicate that miscommunication between the majority and minority exacerbated the 
conflicts around the reform.39 

The German deputy Karl Ott proposed a new approach: national electoral cadasters 
should be established, but their power should depend on the amount of taxes contributed 
by each electorate. Thus, the nationality contributing the most in taxes should have the most 
power. This idea was especially well received by German members, who claimed that only 
with such a system would they not be disadvantaged. Both sides agreed on further surveys 
on the tax output (Steuerleistung) of each Silesian national group by the provincial 
government.40  

For the following years, Slavic deputies listed those surveys as the reason for delay in 
electoral reform. Inquiries about the long duration and the database of the surveys sparked 
new conflict.41 The Slavic side criticized the data the surveys were based on; the two 
previous censuses (1900, 1910) defined nationality by a person’s proclaimed language of 
daily use.42 As mentioned before, this category was hardly congruent with personal national 
affiliation, especially since Silesia’s Slavic population was commonly bilingual, switching 
between languages constantly as needed, rendering the category of the “language of daily 
use” inapplicable,43 or as the Slavic deputy Rudolf Gudrich put it simply: “I speak two 
languages, but one a little weaker.”44  

Slavic diet members criticized exactly this issue and questioned the entire concept of 
tax-bound representation for this reason. Slavic requests for new surveys determining 

44 SMSD, 44th Period (1910), 858. 
43 Brix, Die Umgangssprachen in Altösterreich zwischen Agitation und Assimilation, 336-52. 
42 SMSD, 45th Period (1912), 1019-1022. 
41 SMSD, 44th Period (1910), 834-835; 45th Period (1911-1912), 242-243; 45th Period (1912), 808-815. 
40 SMSD, 44th Period (1909-1910), 131-132. 
39 SMSD, 44th Period (1909-1910), 5-8; 44th Period (1909-1910), 653-657. 
38 Kořalka, Tschechen im Habsburgerreich und in Europa 1815-1914, 164-65. 
37 SMSD, 43d Period (1908), 1341-1356. 

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nationality by other criteria (preferably self-identification) and a permanent parliamentary 
commission to conduct the surveys were denied. German deputies defended using census 
data for nationality purposes, claiming that if the central government saw the language of 
daily use as an adequate criterion to assess nationality, it had to be reliable. In 1912, the 
diet’s majority refused Slavic requests to abort the ongoing surveys and elect a new 
electoral commission to accelerate the reform.45 At the same time, Slavic deputies handed 
over dozens of municipalities’ petitions, urging for a rapid completion of the electoral 
reform.46  

Both sides accused each other of being responsible for delaying the electoral reform. 
The Slavic side argued that the majority would use the surveys to slow down the reform. 
Meanwhile, the German side denied their responsibility for causing the delays, depicting the 
implementation of the tax cadaster as their reaction to Slavic provocation:  

It would have been very easy for you to prevent this! If you had stopped complaining 
that the German majority is putting the Slavic population at a disadvantage and not 
treating them fairly with regard to their various claims, it would never have occurred 
to us to try to exonerate ourselves from this accusation and it would never have been 
necessary to exonerate us.47 

In 1913, the German side suddenly prioritized electoral reform and accepted all 
requests to that effect. The diet’s unanimous resolution declared the preparation of the 
reform draft up to the start of the next legislative period.48 In March 1914, the diet elected a 
parliamentary commission to create those drafts.49 With the outbreak of the war in July 
1914, all Cisleithanian provincial diets were shut down and never reopened, impeding any 
remaining efforts for a national compromise.50 

Putting both parties’ claims aside, the number of requests indicates the different 
prioritizations of the electoral reform. Slightly more than 80 percent of requests or inquiries 
between 1905 and 1914 regarding the reform came from the Slavic side. Petitions for 
electoral reform, its swift execution, or the consideration of certain groups in the reform 
drafts were almost exclusively initiated by Slavic municipalities and submitted by Slavic 
deputies. 

Through the years, various Slavic deputies insisted not only on a national 
compromise akin to the Moravian compromise but on universal equal suffrage as a 
comprehensive solution for national and social inequality, implying universal equal suffrage 
would represent all national proportions accurately without further measures.51 Such a 
position went beyond the Moravian compromise or any attempted compromise. It was also 

51 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 514-520; 43d Period (1907), 494-495; 45th Period (1912), 777-779; 45th Period 
(1912), 1022. 

50 SMSD, 45th Period (1914), 1897-1899. 
49 SMSD, 45th Period (1914), 1367-1368. 
48 SMSD, 45th Period (1913), 1038; 45th Period (1913), 1129-1133. 
47 SMSD, 44th Period (1910), 857-864. 
46 SMSD, 45th Period (1912), 777-780; 45th Period (1912), 833; 45th Period (1912), 854. 
45 SMSD, 45th Period (1912), 1019-1022. 

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not supported by the Viennese government, which aimed for a national compromise in 
Silesia but not for universal equal suffrage in provincial elections.52 

One of the few active inputs from the diet’s German side to achieve a national 
compromise through a new electoral law was requests for a tax-bound national 
representation. On both sides, the height of taxes contributed by different nationalities had 
always been a recurring theme in the debates, though the German side especially insisted on 
their higher contributions to the provincial budget, claiming the majority by contributed 
taxes should be decisive, not the majority by population numbers.53 With their request to 
create a tax cadaster, the German deputies agreed to nationally divided electoral cadasters, 
but only if the electorates’ power was determined by their tax output.54 

The surveys to compile those tax-bound cadasters were a major factor in the 
constant delay of the reform. In particular, the majority pressed for implementing a tax 
cadaster, while the minority pleaded to abort the surveys to accelerate and complete the 
reform.55 German efforts to accelerate the reform never appear in the diet’s minutes and 
seem evanescent in contrast to the Slavic requests. This is particularly evident from 1910 to 
1912, when a high number of requests and inquiries were submitted. While those numbers 
alone do not prove that the German majority intentionally delayed the reforms as Slavic 
deputies accused them in 1912,56 they imply a lower prioritization of electoral reform on 
the German side or at least a lack of interest in changing the existing conditions.  

Language Politics 
 

Another important issue in the negotiations to find a national compromise was 
questions of language usage in administration and schooling. While Slavic national activists 
demanded equalization of their native languages in public administration and accessible 
schooling for every child, German nationalists feared these equalizing measures. 
By law, Cisleithania never had an official language or any regulations concerning the use of 
languages, and Article 19 only proclaimed their equality. Further attempts to regulate the 
official language(s) failed. German, however, remained the dominating language in 
administration, courts, and parliaments out of the empire’s unwritten national and 
linguistic hierarchies.57 In 1897, a reform by Austrian Minister-president Kasimir Badeni 
obligated all civil servants in Bohemia to be proficient in the crownland’s two languages 
within two years, which applied primarily to German civil servants as most Czech civil 
servants were proficient in German already. The reform failed as protests in Prague and 
Vienna escalated violently; Badeni had to resign, the reform was put on the shelf, and the 
population seemed even more divided.58 The Moravian Compromise intended to solve this 
problem by granting every citizen the possibility to communicate in their native languages 

58 Bruckmüller, Österreichische Geschichte, 428-29. 

57 Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten in der Verfassung und Verwaltung Österreichs, 1848-1918, 
88-90. 

56 SMSD, 45th Period (1912), 1019-1022. 

55 SMSD, 44th Period (1910), 834-835; 45th Period (1911-1912), 162; 45th Period (1911-1912), 242-243; 45th 
Period (1912), 808-815; 45th Period (1912), 1019-1022. 

54 SMSD, 44th Period (1909-1910), 131-132. 
53 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 529. 
52 SMSD, 43d Period (1907), 615-617. 

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with the authorities either locally or through translation services provided by the provincial 
government.59 

Silesia’s official language was German, though Polish and Czech were acknowledged 
as languages customary to the crownland. Unlike all other multinational provinces in 
Cisleithania, the Silesian Diet kept German as its only language of negotiation and the 
stenographic minutes.60 As the minutes prove, all Slavic deputies were fluent in German. 
However, they protested the inequal treatment of their native languages in the diet. With the 
start of every new legislative period, Slavic members challenged the fact that even greetings 
and opening speeches were held only in German. The majority’s response was constant 
stressing, that German is the diet’s official language, and therefore the welcoming speech 
must only be in German. The majority ignored requests to change the status quo of the 
diet’s language. Considering these arguments from the German side, the opening of the new 
legislative period in December 1909 seems especially striking. After the Slavic deputies’ 
protests, the provincial governor reminded them that only German was the diet’s language. 
When all deputies took their oath just minutes later, the Slavic deputies were allowed to 
take theirs in Czech or Polish, pointing out the inconsistencies of the majority’s statement.61 

A debate concerning the language of correspondence between municipalities and the 
provincial government escalated, and the debate had to be stopped by the provincial 
governor when national polemics got too agitated. Slavic deputies criticized the provincial 
governments’ decisions to use languages at their own discretion, thus foremost German. 
The Slavic deputies argued that while the government had the means to correspond in all 
languages, municipalities did not have them in all cases. Further, they claimed that the 
public civil service in Silesia was thoroughly germanized. To solve those issues, they 
proposed to draft a language law (akin to the Moravian Compromise’s language law) that 
would equalize all languages and establish translation services. They claimed that such a 
regulation would be even easier in Silesia than in Moravia because here the distribution of 
nationalities followed stronger territorial patterns. The German majority rejected the Slavic 
minority’s request to grant the execution of Article 19, which the Slavic side considered 
transgressed regarding the crownland’s languages. On the other side of the debate, German 
deputies claimed that the main requests to communicate in Slavic languages came from 
highly organized municipalities able to correspond multilingually and drew comparison to 
the United States where all people would agree on one language, which then escalated to a 
German member agitating against the Czech population using hostile stereotypes, depicting 
Czechs as either vagrant musicians or thieves. Subsequently, the diet dismissed the Slavic 
request while accepting the executive committee’s request, allowing the committee to use 
languages discretionarily and, thus, to respond to letters exclusively in German.62 However, 
in 1908, the Imperial Court of Justice ruled this practice violated of Article 19, confirming 
the Slavic deputies’ previous claims that municipalities had the right to communicate with 
the provincial government in languages other than German.63 

63 Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten in der Verfassung und Verwaltung Österreichs, 1848-1918, 
123-24. 

62 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 496-514. 
61 SMSD, 42d Period (1905), 4; 43d Period (1906-1907), 4-5; 44th Period (1909-1910), 3-5. 
60 Gawrecki, “Der Schlesische Landtag,” 2114-15. 
59 Kuzmany, “Habsburg Austria,” 51. 

125 



 

A parliamentary inquiry by two Slavic deputies shows a more practical example of 
the effects of the language conflict. A matter of concern was the German-only inscriptions 
on train station signs and tickets along many Silesian railway lines, which they claimed 
should have been at least bilingual because the lines and stations were located in bilingual 
or non-German regions of Silesia. What Slavic deputies took issue with was met with 
laughter by their German counterparts.64 This seemingly minor inquiry again shows two 
sides of the conflict: the highly different perception of equality and the indifference on the 
German side towards the concerns of the Slavic population. 

A main topic of the diet’s debates about language politics was school politics. Schools 
became one of the nationalist movements’ most important battlegrounds to “gain” children 
for their nation, powered by the fear of “losing” them to another nation. By founding 
national school associations, schooling in native languages became available in theory.65 As 
those schools were only funded by public money if they had enough students, they enforced 
the fears of “losing” children. Losing students could lead to losing an entire school.66 The 
nationalist movements of the nineteenth century enforced monolingualism in their 
insistence on teaching children in their native language, as they no longer saw bilingualism 
as worthwhile. Language became a national asset; therefore, children had to be taught only 
in their native language to flourish under national education. Also, the later acquisition of 
the second language(s) of the own home province was no longer enforced or encouraged, 
and the right to native language schooling granted.67 Many children still frequented German 
schools by necessity or their parents’ choice. Parents chose to send their children to German 
schools for diverse reasons. Many parents preferred German schools, which were more 
prestigious, hoping to improve their children’s opportunities.68 Some parents were urged to 
send their children to schools according to their employer’s or landlord’s will. Their 
decision was often determined by additional benefits that schools provided, such as food, 
shoes, clothing, and presents. Sending children to a specific school was thus less related to 
the question of nationality and native language but rather to necessity, advantages, and 
benefits.69 
The Moravian Compromise also tried to solve the issue of children not being sent to schools 
according to their nationality. It divided the local school boards between nationalities so 
both groups could develop unhindered.70 This separation gave every national school board 
the autonomy to choose their own staff and teaching materials, thus providing their 
national education. To attend a school, children had to be proficient in the language of 
instruction. The school boards also had the power to claim children from other schools if 
they seemed to be in a school not in line with their father’s proclaimed national affiliation.71 

71 Kuzmany, “Habsburg Austria,” 51. 
70 Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit im österreichischen Unterrichtswesen 1867-1918, 191. 
69 Zahra, Kidnapped Souls, 27-31. 
68 Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit im österreichischen Unterrichtswesen 1867-1918, 193-94. 

67 Hannelore Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit im österreichischen Unterrichtswesen 1867-1918, 
Studien zur Geschichte der Österreichisch-Ungarischen Monarchie 26 (Wien: Verl. d. Österr. Akad. d. Wiss, 1995), 
25-31. 

66 Pieter M. Judson, Habsburg: Geschichte eines Imperiums: 1740 - 1918, trans. Michael Müller, 3., durchgesehene 
Auflage (München: C.H. Beck, 2019), 388-92. 

65 Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948 
(Ithaca, N.Y., Bristol: Cornell University Press: University Presses Marketing [distributor], 2011), 16–19. 

64 SMSD, 44th Period (1909-1910), 687-688. 

126 



 

In the Silesian diet, debates about school politics expressed concern about national 
education, indoctrination, and the quality of instruction and supplies. Yet the diet never 
planned major school reforms as they did with the electoral reforms. Attempts to divide the 
Silesian school boards nationally in multilingual municipalities most closely resembled 
measures of the Moravian Compromise. Although the diet’s majority avoided a division, in 
1913 Slavic deputies could implement that the provincial committee of national minority 
schools had to nominate teachers whose nationality was in line with the language of the 
school in question.72 

1908 saw the most requests concerning schools due to a ministerial inquiry of 
secondary schools in addition to school reforms taking place.73 Two parliamentary inquiries 
in the diet in November 1908 concerning Polish schools show an interest in instructional 
supplies and perceived pressure from German authorities. The first inquiry challenged the 
currently used elementary school readers, accusing them of being outdated, and demanded 
both an updated version as well as textbooks teaching German as a foreign language. The 
second inquiry criticized that the administrative forms for Polish teachers were only in 
German and that the school headmasters and inspectors pressured Polish speakers to use 
those; the inquiry underscored that teachers could not cultivate the Polish language to their 
students if they were obligated to use German forms. In addition, a third inquiry denounced 
the “utraquization” (bilingualization) of Slavic schools as attempted germanization.74 
Utraquist schools were schools with two languages of instruction.75 This form of bilingual 
instruction had been mandatory in Silesia since 1873; only in Slavic schools, however, not 
German ones. The inquiry accused German nationalist headmasters, teachers, and agitators 
of increasingly replacing the Czech or Polish lessons with German instruction with the 
purpose of turning the respective schools into German schools and to indoctrinating Polish 
and Czech children, rating this as a violation of Article 19. At the same time, Slavic deputies 
claimed that German agitation would only nurture resentment against everything German 
in the children, thus destroying any ambitions to learn the German language properly. While 
the German diet members calmly accepted the first two inquiries, they denounced the third 
as a lie and fraudulent.76  

Only two days later, German deputies submitted an inquiry by several eastern 
Silesian German and Polish teachers organizations that included several letters. They 
described situations in schools and made accusations from the opposing perspective. The 
letters heavily condemned the “foreign” (i.e., imported and influenced from neighboring 
Galicia) Polish nationalism that impacted Silesian schools, alleging nationalist teachers were 
trying to replace German in utraquist schools, introducing the Polish textbooks into the 
curriculum and pressuring teachers to conform to Polish nationalist wishes. The enclosed 
letters were clearly pro-German and loyal to the monarchy and appealed to regional Silesian 
patriotism. One of the letters’ authors, Josef Kożdon,77 was a known activist, agitating for 
eastern Silesian (Slunzak) regionalism in the Habsburg monarchy and against any 

77 SMSD, 43d Period (1908), 1535-1546. 
76 SMSD, 43d Period (1908), 1440-1443. 
75 Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit im österreichischen Unterrichtswesen 1867-1918, 29. 
74 SMSD, 43d Period (1908), 1440. 
73 Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit im österreichischen Unterrichtswesen 1867-1918, 222-23. 
72 Gawrecki, “Der Schlesische Landtag,” 2126. 

127 



 

nationalism but clearly sympathizing with Germandom as he was elected to the diet 
through German support in 1907.78 In this rare instance, Silesian Regionalism is visible in 
the diet and siding with the German majority. 

Considering these debates about Germanization or Slavicization through utraquist 
schools, the negotiations on the following day concerning a proposed law on language 
classes proceeded in a surprisingly concordant and peaceful fashion. This law would have 
obliged pupils of secondary schools to learn at least one other of the crownland’s 
languages.79 The idea was also well received on the German side, acknowledging that 
language was a root of but also a solution to national conflicts:  

The knowledge of a country's second language is an absolute necessity for all of us, in fact I 
firmly maintain that the fact that our parliamentary conditions are so unfavorable is 
primarily due to the fact that a large part of the population does not know the country's 
second language. […] It is my firm belief that not we, but perhaps our children and 
grandchildren, will have national peace when people will know more languages.80  

The diet accepted this proposal, but similar to the last electoral reform attempt, the draft of 
the law was not finalized soon enough.81 A discourse among German nationalist teachers in 
the Bohemian lands that unfolded in the following years put German approval in a different 
light. They surmised that they could no longer sustain their position without knowledge of 
the province’s other language(s). Thus, they had to learn the “opponent’s” language to 
compete against them. Their acquiescence to learn the second language was also motivated 
by economic competition and the fear of being replaced by bilingual Czech civil servants in 
public administration.82 

National questions and conflicts manifested in peoples’ everyday life primarily 
through language. The Silesian diet’s debates concerning language topics illustrate those 
conflicts and show the different interests. However, the diet never discussed major language 
reforms. The number of Slavic requests concerning language is higher than that of German 
requests, and a large part of the Slavic requests concerned equalization of the 
parliamentary or administrative languages. Meanwhile, the German majority showed no 
interest in such measures, claiming that German linguistic dominance functioned well 
enough in the past. 

 
 The requests about school politics are more evenly balanced by nationality, 
indicating the priority of schooling on both sides of the national conflict and fears of “losing” 
their children. Even though debates about language politics would, in some instances, 
inspire fierce national polemics in the Silesian diet, they also showed in other instances, 
such as both sides agreeing on instruction in a second language of the crownland, that 
reconciliation was possible. 

82 Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit im österreichischen Unterrichtswesen 1867-1918, 225-27. 
81 SMSD, 44th Period (1909-1910), 646; 45th Period (1911-1912), 682. 
80 SMSD, 43d Period (1908), 1492. 
79 SMSD, 43d Period (1908), 1491-1493. 
78 Kamusella, Silesia and Central European Nationalisms, 234-35. 

128 



 

Conclusions 
 

Between 1905 and 1914, the crownland of Silesia saw several attempts at electoral 
reform that sought to solve (or at least pacify) national conflicts. This resulted in two drafts 
of electoral laws that only proposed marginal changes and not a solution to the national 
conflicts; the Viennese central government did not sanction those drafts, as the central 
government aimed for a national compromise in Silesia. A further electoral reform that 
attempted to establish tax-bound national cadasters as a means of national compromise 
was subject to many delays and could not be presented before the closure of the Silesian 
Diet in July 1914.  

While Slavic deputies of the Silesian Diet advocated for equalization through 
universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage, the German majority promoted tax-bound 
equalization through national cadasters, which sought to base the right to representation 
and participation on each national population’s tax output (Steuerleistung). The equality of 
nationalities would, therefore, still not have been a fundamental right, but one dependent 
on the amount of taxes paid by each nationality. 

During this period, the Silesian parliament repeatedly discussed language issues, but 
reforms akin to the language reforms of the Moravian Compromise never materialized. 
Measures in this vein were especially considered and demanded by Slavic diet members. 
Official use of Slavic languages continued to be rejected. German remained the only 
language of parliamentary proceedings and the language of correspondence of the 
provincial government, even as the Imperial Court of Justice ruled the latter as a violation of 
Article 19. The German side only received laws on the compulsory teaching of a second 
national language in schools positively. School politics reflected the fears both sides of the 
national conflict voiced of “losing” children to the other nation. 

The reasons why the Silesian diet did not achieve a national compromise are a 
combination of many diverse factors and circumstances. Different priorities, strong Slavic 
under-representation in parliament, and fears of Slavicization and Germanization were 
decisive factors, although not the only ones. The different priorities of a national 
compromise are visible through the processes in parliament. Although both sides 
considered a national compromise necessary, the efforts to achieve it differed immensely. 
While the Slavic members prioritized electoral reforms more strongly and constantly 
addressed them through interpellations, requests, and petitions, the German majority 
remained more reactive. This is reflected both in the numbers and the content of 
interventions and debates. In addition to the lack of interest on the German side, Jiří Kořalka 
considers the absence of mediation between the two sides as the decisive factor for the 
failure to achieve a Silesian Compromise; Moravian great landowners spurred the Moravian 
Compromise, but the great landowners of Silesia did not take the initiative.83  

Despite years of discussions and preparations, an equalizing electoral and language 
reform could never be implemented. Judging by its timeline, it appears that the Silesian Diet 
was shut down right on the verge of a promising draft of a new electoral law. Whether this 

83 Kořalka, Tschechen im Habsburgerreich und in Europa 1815-1914, 165. 

129 



 

reform really would have been a breakthrough to a Silesian Compromise or another 
discarded draft remains an open question.  

130 



 

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132 


	Negotiating National Equality in the Austrian Silesian Diet 1905-1914 
	 
	Abstract 
	 
	 
	 
	 
	Introduction 
	Attempted Reforms of Electoral Laws 
	Language Politics 
	Conclusions 
	Bibliography 


