CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Pojar, Vojtech |
|---|---|
| Title | Experts in Post-Imperial Transitions: Entanglements and Diverging Trajectories of Eugenicists between the Habsburg Empire and the 'Miniature Empires', c. 1900-1939 |
| Summary | This dissertation proposes a new perspective on eugenics in Austria-Hungary and the post-Habsburg territories. It begins by tracing the circulation of eugenic knowledge in the late imperial context, well before the consolidation of nation-states. It argues that in this imperial setting, eugenics was adopted and retooled as a conceptual framework for managing the empire’s ethnocultural diversity. While some resulting eugenic blueprints were dark or ambiguous, others paradoxically sought to affirm this diversity. In line with their imperial focus, proponents of eugenics also established supra-national and sub-national networks alongside, if not earlier than, the national ones. Building on these findings, the second part of this dissertation turns to the interwar period, analyzing eugenic networks, concepts, and practices across various post-Habsburg territories—in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. It reveals their striking persistence since the imperial period, particularly during the first decade following World War I. The analysis suggests that the networks, concepts, and practices inherited from the imperial context were repurposed to navigate the post-imperial transitions, strategically addressing the mini-imperial nature of these states. However, by the beginning of the second interwar decade, these legacies disintegrated, giving way to overtly racist, radical nationalist, and authoritarian eugenic discourses, which became dominant in the region. Transnational in scope and focused on entanglements, this dissertation presents a new integrative narrative about eugenics in Habsburg and post-Habsburg territories, interpreted through imperial and post-imperial lenses. In doing so, it seeks to bridge the largely separated fields of Habsburg Studies and the history of eugenics in East Central Europe. |
| Supervisor | Trencsényi, Balázs; Lafferton Emese |
| Department | History PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/pojar_vojtech.pdf |
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