sehepunkte 26 (2026), Nr. 11

Claire Morelon: Streetscapes of War and Revolution

As noted by many scholars, the Habsburg home front played a key role in the ultimate defeat and dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Claire Morelon's recent book is a welcome addition to the debates surrounding the domestic dimensions of the fall of the monarchy. Traditionally, studies on this subject have revolved around issues of nationalism and radical politics while neglecting more nuanced factors that drove a wedge between the mentality of the people and that of the government. By choosing Prague as the subject of her study, the author eschews the usual emphasis on the metropolitan perspectives of Vienna or Budapest, bringing much needed insight into provincial dimensions of the war. Moreover, since she extends her perspective well beyond the revolutionary moment of 28 October 1918, her study offers a much-needed reappraisal of the post-1918 transition process in Czechoslovakia. By stressing continuities and rifts, Morelon's approach reveals how the "national revolution" was much less straightforward than often assumed. More traditional narratives, in contrast, adopt a simple national and teleological perspective that emphasizes a purely linear causal chain of events leading inevitably to national independence.

Morelon focuses on the phenomena at play from below by examining the perspective of the Prague streets in a topographic, physical, and social sense. Understanding the everyday dimensions of wartime politics and policies has always been key to any analysis of the home front, and Morelon's book does this approach much justice by immersing the reader thoroughly in the life of the city on the most basic level, which she describes as the "everyday sensorial texture of the city." (3) She unveils a complicated pattern of interconnected loyalties, noting that patriotism on the local, regional, national, and imperial levels ultimately depended on the perception of everyday realities within the liminal semi-private/semi-public urban space. The close study of streets and squares enables her to follow "the trajectories of Prague" (3) from the early shocks of mobilization to the collapse of state authority, from a regional center to a capital, and from growing despair and disillusionment to the uncertainties and hopes of the immediate postwar years.

The book is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 analyzes the process of militarization within the urban space as well as the general transformation of civil-military relations that followed on the heels of mobilization. The author convincingly argues that the war altered the city administration and life in general through various security, propaganda, and logistical measures as well as through the massive presence of soldiers and other symbols of war that appeared almost immediately in the city streets. She shows how the increased military presence fueled not only patriotism, but also conflict and violence in everyday interactions. Likewise, she outlines how the efforts of the military to control society alienated the civil administration and intensified conflicts within civil-military relations at the administrative level. Notably, Morelon's conclusion that, in practice, arbitrary persecution and severe security measures were blunted by general inefficiency is an important qualifier, adding nuance to our understanding of the nature of "war absolutism" in Cisleithania.

Chapter 2 analyzes imperial patriotic mobilization on two key levels: first, on the streets through campaigns, rituals, and symbols; and second, in people's lives through charities, welfare efforts, and other social support measures that the government increasingly outsourced to various, often nationalist, actors. In Chapter 3, Morelon looks at the way the war manifested itself in public spaces through reminders of absence, such as solidarity collections for the soldiers of the local regiment, monuments to the fallen, or the silence of requisitioned church bells. At the same time, the text also studies the constant presence of new phenomena, such as hospitals, wounded bodies, and refugees. As the author shows, the refugees in particular suffered not only from ethnic and racial stereotyping but also from growing antagonism among the local population, especially as people faced severe shortages. These economic struggles are analyzed in detail in Chapter 4, which covers the belated and increasingly inefficient efforts by the authorities to deal with the dynamics of scarcity by enacting increasingly extreme regulation. This chapter also analyses the strategies adopted to cope with the shortages that became central to the urban experience of deprivation. Scarcity distorted social hierarchies and relations between groups, particularly between urban and rural communities, ultimately posing a perceived threat to the unity of the (Czech) national body.

In Chapter 5, Morelon focuses on the growing crisis of legitimacy affecting the state through the lens of protest. This chapter emphasizes the importance of studying spatial patterns of protest, noting that protests both send a message and attach new meanings to traditional focal points within the streetscape. It also traces a strong continuity with postwar practices, suggesting that unrest followed the same patterns in the same spaces. Additionally, Morelon uses the example of the housing crisis to analyze the uneven dynamics of continuity and change within the context of ongoing social conflicts, including direct actions undertaken by what was now the Czechoslovak public against the perceived unequal distribution of resources. She situates attacks on the perceived transgressors of the new postwar order (such as Jews, Germans, and war profiteers) within the context of a new grassroots movement linked to new ideas of democracy and self-government. However, one may well ask whether these expressions of street justice might rather be interpreted as a byproduct of wartime frustrations and the general loss of power and influence on the part of the central state and local authorities leading to the "revolution of 1918."

Similar questions about continuity and the nature of the revolution in 1918 come to the fore in Chapter 6, where the author aims to overturn traditional narratives by convincingly arguing that the revolution was neither "a purely Czech national revolution" nor "an aborted Bolshevik coup" but an event "centered around class and moral economy of wartime sacrifices." (252) As above, she substantiates her claims by looking closely at the "everyday revolution" as it unfolded in the streets of Prague, where, as she notes, traditional political dichotomies were largely irrelevant. Both "liberation" and "revolution" very much remained ambivalent terms whose meanings differed from one person to the next. October 1918, Morelon contends, did not bring much of a break from the harsh realities of everyday life for many people, apart from a momentary ecstasy of hope. Indeed, reading Morelon's analysis begs the question of whether (or to what extent) the crowds were celebrating national independence or rather if their enthusiasm largely reflected the widespread relief that the war was over. While this particular question remains unanswered, the book very convincingly shows that the wartime regime itself persisted in terms of legal frameworks, official structures, and even personnel as well as in the crumbling economy, social conflict, everyday violence, and fighting that continued in the new peripheries well into 1919 or 1920.

There is no question that Streetscapes of War and Revolution is an innovative contribution to the study of the urban home front in World War I. It offers fascinating insights into the inner dynamics of urban life in wartime, upending many traditional narratives in the process. It offers a dynamic picture of patriotism that sheds light at how loyalty was produced, reproduced, and lost during the last Habsburg war by revealing the consistent logic of economic well-being that overshadowed any immediate political affiliations. And, last but not least, it deeply challenges the traditional chronology of Central European history, adding a strong argument to the claim that continuities, not changes, were the defining characteristics of the post-1918 transition. In this context, Morelon positions her research at the center of current historiography, making her book a must-read for any scholar interested in the history of the wartime Habsburg Empire as well as for those studying not just early Czechoslovakia, but any of the emerging successor states of post-1918 Central Europe.