Capital Cities in the Aftermath of Empires

Planning in Central and Southeastern Europe

Emily Gunzburger Makas, Tanja Damljanovic Conley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135167240
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This book explores the planning and architectural histories of the cities across Central and Southeastern Europe transformed into the cultural and political capitals of the new nationstates created in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In their introduction, editors Makaš and Conley discuss the interrelated processes of nationalization, modernization, and Europeanization in the region at that time, with special attention paid to the way architectural and urban models from Western and Central Europe were adapted to fit the varying local physical and political contexts.

Individual studies provide summaries of proposed and realized projects in fourteen cities.Each addresses the political and ideological aspects of the city's urban history, including the idea of becoming a cultural and/or political capital as well as the relationship between national and urban development. The concluding chapter builds on the introductory argument about how the search for national identity combined with the pursuit of modernization and desire to be more European drove the development of these cities in the aftermath of empires.

Chapter 1
Shaping Central and Southeastern European Capital Cities in the Age of Nationalism

Tanja Damljanoviæ Conley and Emily Gunzburger Makaš

The Ottoman and Habsburg Empires were both dismantled after World War I, resulting in the formation of new nation-states. Perhaps more importantly, over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, each witnessed a gradual rise of politically and culturally motivated national movements within their borders. As nationalism became a dominant force throughout Europe, the argument that every national group should have its own nation-state slowly reshaped Central (meaning Habsburg) and Southeastern (meaning Ottoman) Europe into a collection of smaller countries within each of which an existing city became a national capital.¹

Despite the parallels between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, their geopolitical positions in Europe varied, as did their internal structures and especially the relationships between the centres and peripheries. As a result, the two empires witnessed different patterns of decline and their peoples harboured dissimilar attitudes towards their imperial centres. These differences determined the fate of cities in the region as much as did the similarities in the rise of national movements. The new authorities in Southeastern Europe saw the Ottoman Empire, and its political and symbolic centre of Istanbul, as a backward yoke to overcome, with physical legacies to be erased in the interest of nationalization and modernization. Vienna and Austria-Hungary similarly represented a rejected imperial authority for many Central Europeans. Yet, Vienna was viewed as a model to be emulated in attempts to modernize in both regions, especially in architectural and urban terms. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was also a structure within which change could initially be envisioned, rather than one that should be completely obliterated, as many Southeastern Europeans felt about the Ottoman Empire.

The disintegration of both the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires is often analyzed through the lens of their weaknesses and especially their inability to incorporate the forces of modernity into their political and socio-cultural structures. However, during the period of their decline in the late nineteenth century, the Habsburgs dealt more efficiently with the growing challenges and, as a result, developed some responses not only to the emergence of nationalism, but also to rapid urban growth, industrialization, and the search for increased efficiency and the beautification of the urban fabric. They were also more aware of the potential symbolic meaning of urban and architectural design both in Vienna and in peripheral cities of the empire. On the other hand, although the reforms of the era known as tanzimat or re-ordering, within the Ottoman realms in the mid-nineteenth century did address some of these urban issues along with political and social structures, it seemed to be too little, too late, as it paralleled the fragmentation of the empire and failed to reassure and solidify its population.

As in most of Europe, urban transformations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Central and Southeastern Europe responded to new social and economic realities: the redistribution of power during and after the rise of the middle class; extensive growth of cities through rural to urban migrations; and varying degrees of technical innovation and industrialization. However, in both regions the emergence and strengthening of national movements and changing state contexts were central factors influencing the development of key cities. The period from the Napoleonic Wars until World War II is remembered as the ‘first age’ of the generation of modern national identities, the formation of modern nation-states, and the construction or adaptation of capital cities to give visual support to national ideologies. During the nineteenth century, the capital cities of national movements, within the borders of the Habsburg Empire, were recognized as national seats and played a role in the formation of particular Kulturnations. Some would become centres of independent nation-states after World War I, while others would wait until the ‘second age’ of European nationalism, after the Cold War, to assume such roles. Still others would never become political capitals. On the other hand, the seats of national entities in the gradually diminishing territory of the Ottoman Empire developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century simultaneously as the leading cultural centres and political seats of independent or autonomous states.

The Political Context and Inherited Urban Topography in Central Europe

Over the course of the nineteenth century, numerous national movements were initiated by the disparate peoples of Habsburg Central Europe. For the most part, these led only to calls for cultural rights and autonomy, falling short of the demands for political independence heard in Ottoman Southeastern Europe at that time. Though characterized by legislative action and street demonstrations, the national movements within the Habsburg Empire seldom resorted to significant violence, with the exception of the only partially successful revolutions of 1848. Without further internal revolts, and especially without external enemies attacking from all sides, the Habsburg Empire retained its integrity in the late nineteenth century and even expanded its borders slightly.

At the same time, the growing liberal middle class in many Habsburg cities gained control of their municipalities, and were actively involved in re-imagining their cities to serve as cultural centres for the national groups they sought to promote. Though imagined as national centres by these local authorities, most of the cities also remained imperial administrative centres, resulting in complex and layered urban identities. Budapest is a clear example showing the overlapping of simultaneous national and imperial agendas. After the Habsburg Empire became the Dual Monarchy through the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Hungarians and Hungary were officially elevated to a level parallel with Austrian Germans and Austria. The empire was divided into two entities, with some shared ministries and an Austrian and a Hungarian parliament each presiding over the internal affairs of their respective halves. Soon after the Compromise, the towns of Buda, Obuda, and Pest were merged to form Budapest, which was then expanded and augmented into a city worthy of dual capital status. However, in addition to being an imperial capital, Budapest was also seen as a centre for the Hungarian people, among whom a national cultural movement had begun decades earlier. Few cities have grown so fast or been as totally reinvented as Budapest in the final decades of the nineteenth century.

Though other peoples within the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not gain the autonomy and elevated position of the Hungarians, they too witnessed growing national consciousness during the nineteenth century. Strong national movements focused on particular urban centres emerged among Czechs, Croats, and Poles, and to a lesser extent among Slovaks and Slovenes, but throughout the Dual Monarchy the ideology of nationalism had firmly taken root by World War I. In the chaos of that conflict, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved into the countries of Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Parts of the empire were combined with other territories to recreate Poland and to form a South Slavic union: the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929).

Though the national movements of Central Europe did not lead to separate states until the twentieth century, the cultural development of these different national movements almost always focused on a particular city, which was regarded as the capital of the conceptualized nation. Establishing and promoting national institutions centred on a capital city was a clear expression of cultural autonomy, even when political independence did not seem an achievable or necessary goal. As some of these cities became political capitals of newly independent states in the twentieth century, in most cases the national component of their urban identities was strengthened and reinforced by the new governments. Symbolic urban projects were priority concerns for most, despite limited resources.

Prague is a paradigmatic example of the transformation and development of a Central European capital city from medieval times to the present. The city, which evolved from the seat of medieval Czech kings into the capital of the Holy Roman Emperors, later became an administrative centre of the Habsburg province of Bohemia, and even later the capital of an independent state. The site of the medieval rulers has retained its role from the middle ages to the present – the presidential residence of the modern nation-state is located within the medieval castle. Prague also reveals the characteristic silhouette and urban topography and pattern of growth of the typical Central European city’s medieval origins. A citadel containing the seat of both a prince and a bishop was built on a high hill alongside a river at a secure crossing point. A number of small towns grew up and were consolidated into the single city of Prague, just as Budapest was formed by combining several towns clustered around the Danube and overlooked by Buda Castle on its hilltop promontory. Again paralleling Budapest, it was in the second half of the nineteenth century that Prague emerged as the centre of intellectual and cultural development for Czechs, and redevelopment projects were undertaken to modernize the city and reflect this symbolic position.

Within the Habsburg Empire and later within Czechoslovakia, the economic, administrative, and cultural centre for Slovaks was the city of Pressburg, whose Germanic name was Slavicized to Bratislava in 1919. Medieval Bratislava followed the typical Central European urban pattern of hilltop citadel and walled merchant town, which expanded gradually over the centuries. The Slovak national movement was less clearly defined in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than some others in Central Europe, and Slovaks were never part of a political entity in which they constituted a majority during this period (except briefly during World War II). Thus the development of the multicultural city of Bratislava in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries always reflected tensions between different identities, first between Slovak and Hungarian-imperial and later between Slovak and Czechoslovak.

The Polish national movement, on the other hand, was particularly strong, in large part because of the partition and subjugation of Poles. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Cracow was designated a ‘free city’, responsible for its own administration. As the only Polish entity ruled by Poles, the emergent national movement chose to focus its attention on Cracow. Even after tightened Austrian control, following a failed uprising in 1846, Habsburg policies on national organization and cultural autonomy remained more lenient than in Prussia and Russia, and thus for Poles both within the Austro-Hungarian Empire and beyond its borders, the city of Cracow continued to be the focus of national imagination. Cracow’s historic development reflects a similar pattern to other cities in the region as the city grew around medieval, hilltop fortification beside a river. Especially towards the end of the nineteenth century, extensive building, planning, and preservation projects in the city contributed to its role as a symbol of Polish identity. When Poland was reconstituted after World War I however, Warsaw regained the position as capital it had held in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries before partitioning. Under Russian rule, little politically motivated or representative building or planning had occurred in Warsaw, but with independence, reinforcing the city’s role as Polish capital through architecture and urbanism became the focus of much attention.

Three South Slavic cities in the Habsburg Empire – Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Sarajevo – were also conceived of as national capitals and subject to urban intervention in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but their respective national movements varied significantly in strength and organization. Intensive construction projects focused on promoting both Croatian and pan- South Slavic identities were undertaken in the city of Zagreb in response both to urban developments in Vienna and to a growing Croatian national movement spurned by the Magyarization policies of Hungary. Though Napoleon (1769- 1821) made Ljubljana the capital of his South Slavic, Illyrian Provinces in the early nineteenth century, and it continued as administrative centre within the Habsburg Empire afterwards, the physical restructuring of the city did not really begin until necessitated by an earthquake in 1895. It was not until even later, in the interwar period, that Ljubljana was dramatically transformed and began to assume a particularly Slovene layer of identity through the numerous urban projects of native son, Jože Plečnik. Following the 1878 Congress of Berlin, Austria-Hungary occupied and administered Bosnia-Hercegovina on behalf of the Ottomans, who retained de jure suzerainty over the province until official annexation by the Habsburgs in 1908. The Austro-Hungarian imperial authorities sponsored major building programmes and urban reorganization, predominately centred on the province’s capital city of Sarajevo; these were, in part, designed to foster a sense of Bosnian national identity. After World War I, the cities of Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Sarajevo continued as the centres of their respective Kulturnations and as administrative centres within the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.

The cityscapes of Central Europe adjusted more readily than their Southeastern European counterparts to the quests for regularity, rectilinear street networks, and geometrically formed public spaces which characterized nineteenth-century urbanism. For one, the region had experienced the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, which sought to rationalize and find reason and order in everything, including cities and architecture. The process of transforming the organic medieval urban fabric into more precisely defined and regularized forms had begun at that time through the urban regulations and reforms of Maria Theresa (1717–1780) and her successors. As dramatic as the nineteenth-century urban transformations were in Central Europe, they can thus be understood as a continuation of a process begun a little earlier, though one that began to take on decidedly national connotations for the first time in the nineteenth century.

The Political Context and Inherited Urban Topography in Southeastern Europe

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, nearly all Southeastern Europe was under Ottoman control. However, between 1815 and 1914, this vast empire was gradually carved up into separate states due in part to internal uprisings (initially more often economically than nationally motivated), but mostly as a result of military and economic pressure from the great powers of Europe. In most cases the break was not clean, with self-ruling principalities or limited autonomy gained before official independence. Despite the overwhelming tasks of consolidating internal power, setting up new government apparatuses, and continued defence and expansion of their rights and borders, each of the new states that emerged from the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century also spent considerable energy on economic and cultural development and modernization. Building programmes were necessitated by the new government functions, by reforms in education and infrastructure, and by the founding of cultural institutions which accompanied these national movements. As in Central Europe, these developments focused predominantly on a central city: a new national, political, cultural, and economic capital.

Unlike Central Europe however, where nearly all of the new capitals had been established originally as medieval towns with similar settlement and development histories, the cities of Southeastern Europe which were to become capitals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries varied considerably in both their origin and growth patterns. Thus the inherited urban topography differed very significantly from Central Europe to Southeastern Europe. Some Southeastern European cities have ancient origins, typically Roman, but occasionally earlier. Others, however, were originally founded in the early medieval period, and still others were Ottoman foundations. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, regardless of their origins, most key Southeastern European cities had assumed the physical characteristics of a typical Ottoman town. In the late nineteenth century, the look, feel, and functioning of these provincial Ottoman centres was totally transformed.

Greece and Serbia were the first in Southeastern Europe to separate from Ottoman rule in the early nineteenth century. In the 1820s, with significant aid from the Russians, British, and French, Greece secured autonomy and then independence. Because of the European ‘rediscovery’ of the Athenian Acropolis and feverous philhellenic movement, the continuity of Thessalonica as capital and governing centre from the Roman until the late-Ottoman period was interrupted and the new Greece was centred on ancient Greece’s most important city. The aggrandizing of Athens, which had declined to little more than a village, into a modern capital worthy of its ancient glory began almost immediately. The European powers installed a Bavarian king in Greece, who imported planners and architects along with his advisors and ministers. Athens clearly demonstrates how the iconography of a modern capital relied on the dominating topography of an ancient inheritance. Alluding to the role of Athens for ancient Greeks, the Acropolis became the foremost urban element, whose symbolism extended beyond national boundaries and whose position governed many urban actions in the construction of the modern Greek capital.

After a series of rebellions, Serbia achieved autonomous rule in 1830. Because it was the most vibrant urban centre with the best developed international connections in Serbia, Belgrade was declared the capital city despite its location on the border with Austria-Hungary. Although the medieval period was central to modern Serbian national identity, insisting on the revival of one of Serbia’s medieval capitals was out of the question as they were further south, still in Ottoman territory. Belgrade was gradually transformed into a modern capital by the Obrenović and Karađorđević kings, as their power grew over the course of the nineteenth century. The city was originally a Roman castrum which, after the turbulent middle ages, became the administrative centre of an Ottoman territorial unit. In Belgrade, where the Ottoman urban fabric has been erased, continuity with the ancient urban structure remains recognizable in the location of two main commercial streets that trace the Roman cardo and decumanus, as well as in the location of the old market (today a civic park), which coincides with the Roman forum. Belgrade would retain its status as capital even when the south Slavic kingdom was formed, as the Serbian rulers assumed the role of Yugoslav monarchs in the new state in the interwar period.

Small, mountainous Montenegro is a unique case in Southeastern Europe since it managed to maintain self-rule for centuries though surrounded by the Ottoman Empire. This theocratic principality was secularized in the 1850s, and then modernized from 1860 to 1918 under the rule of King Nikola I, who oversaw the expansion of Cetinje, the court from which Montenegro was ruled, to become not only a European style capital but also a city. First established as a Christian-Orthodox monastic community, it later assumed the role of a royal court and only gained a settlement and non-government or church related function in the late nineteenth century. Thus it can perhaps be understood as similar to the Central European pattern, but rather than growing gradually over centuries, this transformation was accelerated and concentrated within a few decades in the late nineteenth century. However, by the time Cetinje began to resemble a city, it had already lost its status as capital of an independent state, as Mo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• The Contributors
• Chapter 1 Shaping Central and Southeastern European Capital Cities in the Age of Nationalism
• Chapter 2 Athens
• Chapter 3 Belgrade
• Chapter 4 Bucharest
• Chapter 5 Cetinje
• Chapter 6 Sofia
• Chapter 7 Tirana
• Chapter 8 Ankara
• Chapter 9 Budapest
• Chapter 10 Prague
• Chapter 11 Bratislava
• Chapter 12 Cracow and Warsaw
• Chapter 13 Zagreb
• Chapter 14 Ljubljana
• Chapter 15 Sarajevo
• Chapter 16 Not Just the National: Modernity and the Myth of Europe in the Capital Cities of Central and Southeastern Europe