Robert Pyrah – författare

This volume addresses the question of ‘identity’ in East-Central Europe. It engages with a specific definition of ‘sub-cultures’ over the period from c. 1900 to the present and proposes novel ways in which the term can be used with the purpose of understanding identities that do not conform to the fixed, standard categories imposed from the top down, such as ‘ethnic group’, ‘majority’ or ‘minority’. Instead, a ‘sub-culture’ is an identity that sits between these categories. It may blend languages, e.g. dialect forms, cultural practices, ethnic and social identifications, or religious affiliations as well as concepts of race and biology that, similarly, sit outside national projects.

This book focuses on the developments in research, national-historical narratives, and geographies of East Central Europe. It explores the emergence of specific discursive practices, architectures of ethnic identity, and the eventual juxtaposition during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This book focuses on the Burgtheater, which was known as the 'first German stage' in the nineteenth century but, by 1934, had clearly assumed the mantle of a 'national theatre for Austria'.

This volume addresses the question of ‘identity’ in East-Central Europe. It engages with a specific definition of ‘sub-cultures’ over the period from c. 1900 to the present and proposes novel ways in which the term can be used with the purpose of understanding identities that do not conform to the fixed, standard categories imposed from the top down, such as ‘ethnic group’, ‘majority’ or ‘minority’. Instead, a ‘sub-culture’ is an identity that sits between these categories. It may blend languages, e.g. dialect forms, cultural practices, ethnic and social identifications, or religious affiliations as well as concepts of race and biology that, similarly, sit outside national projects.

"Twenty years after the fall of Communism, scholarship on East-Central Europe has adopted mainstream western methodologies, but remains preoccupied with a narrow range of themes. Nationalism, identity, fin- de-siecle art and culture, and revisionist historiography dominate the field to the detriment of other subjects. Using a variety of lenses - literary, political, linguistic, medical - the authors address a conspectus of original themes, including Jewish literary life in interwar Romania; the Galician ''Alphabet War''; and Saxon eugenics in Transylvania. These case studies transcend their East-Central European context by engaging with conceptually broad questions. This volume additionally contains a comprehensive Introduction and topical Bibliography of use to students and teachers, resulting in one of the most creative collections of studies dealing with East-Central Europe to date. This volume has its roots in an interdisciplinary seminar at the University of Oxford, bringing together emerging and established scholars, with the explicit aim of broadening the study of this region, its history and culture beyond the established paradigms. Robert Pyrah is a Research Fellow at St Antony''s College and an authority on theatre and cultural politics in Austria and post- Habsburg central Europe; Marius Turda is founder of the International Working Group on the History of Race and Eugenics based at Oxford Brookes University."

"Twenty years after the fall of Communism, scholarship on East-Central Europe has adopted mainstream western methodologies, but remains preoccupied with a narrow range of themes. Nationalism, identity, fin- de-siecle art and culture, and revisionist historiography dominate the field to the detriment of other subjects. Using a variety of lenses - literary, political, linguistic, medical - the authors address a conspectus of original themes, including Jewish literary life in interwar Romania; the Galician ''Alphabet War''; and Saxon eugenics in Transylvania. These case studies transcend their East-Central European context by engaging with conceptually broad questions. This volume additionally contains a comprehensive Introduction and topical Bibliography of use to students and teachers, resulting in one of the most creative collections of studies dealing with East-Central Europe to date. This volume has its roots in an interdisciplinary seminar at the University of Oxford, bringing together emerging and established scholars, with the explicit aim of broadening the study of this region, its history and culture beyond the established paradigms. Robert Pyrah is a Research Fellow at St Antony''s College and an authority on theatre and cultural politics in Austria and post- Habsburg central Europe; Marius Turda is founder of the International Working Group on the History of Race and Eugenics based at Oxford Brookes University."

"The collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918 galvanized discussion about national identity in the new Republic of Austria. As Robert Pyrah shows in this thoroughly documented study, the complex identity politics of interwar Austria were played out in the theatres of Vienna, which enjoyed a cultural prominence rarely matched in other countries. By 1934, productions across the city were being co-opted to serve the newly patriotic cause of the Dollfuss and Schuschnigg regimes, and the Burgtheater, once known as the first German stage, had been transformed into a national theatre for Austria. Using case studies of key productions and a wealth of previously unseen archival material, Pyrah sheds new light on artistic and ideological developments throughout the period, including the neglected earlier years. He documents previously unexplored overlaps in the cultural programmes of Left and Right, and unearths evidence that key institutions were subverted by the Right well before the suspension of parliamentary rule in 1933."

"The collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918 galvanized discussion about national identity in the new Republic of Austria. As Robert Pyrah shows in this thoroughly documented study, the complex identity politics of interwar Austria were played out in the theatres of Vienna, which enjoyed a cultural prominence rarely matched in other countries. By 1934, productions across the city were being co-opted to serve the newly patriotic cause of the Dollfuss and Schuschnigg regimes, and the Burgtheater, once known as the first German stage, had been transformed into a national theatre for Austria. Using case studies of key productions and a wealth of previously unseen archival material, Pyrah sheds new light on artistic and ideological developments throughout the period, including the neglected earlier years. He documents previously unexplored overlaps in the cultural programmes of Left and Right, and unearths evidence that key institutions were subverted by the Right well before the suspension of parliamentary rule in 1933."

This book focuses on the developments in research, national-historical narratives, and geographies of East Central Europe. It explores the emergence of specific discursive practices, architectures of ethnic identity, and the eventual juxtaposition during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

After World War II, Europe witnessed the massive redrawing of national borders and the efforts to make the population fit those new borders. As a consequence of these forced changes, both Lviv and Wrocław went through cataclysmic changes in population and culture. Assertively Polish prewar Lwów became Soviet Lvov, and then, after 1991, it became assertively Ukrainian Lviv. Breslau, the third largest city in Germany before 1945, was in turn "recovered" by communist Poland as Wrocław. Practically the entire population of Breslau was replaced, and Lwów's demography too was dramatically restructured: many Polish inhabitants migrated to Wrocław and most Jews perished or went into exile. The forced migration of these groups incorporated new myths and the construction of official memory projects. The chapters in this edited book compare the two cities by focusing on lived experiences and "bottom-up" historical processes. Their sources and methods are those of micro-history and include oral testimonies, memoirs, direct observation and questionnaires, examples of popular culture, and media pieces. The essays explore many manifestations of the two sides of the same coin—loss on the one hand, gain on the other—in two cities that, as a result of the political reality of the time, are complementary.