Europa Erlesen. Galizien

When Austria acquired the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, the largest of its crown lands, with little effort during the First Partition of Poland in 1772, the Polish monarchs did not fully realize what they had gotten themselves into. It took a few decades for German-Austrian journalism to discover the multinationality and multiculturalism of this region beyond its rudimentary exoticism, and even longer for non-German-speaking authors from Galicia to express their perspectives in writing. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was one of the first Austrian writers to highlight the coexistence of Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews in Galicia.

In addition to these nationalities, Galicia was home to a variety of other ethnic groups and minorities, including German and Austrian civil servants, Armenian and Greek merchants in Lviv, Boyks and Lemkos in the Beskids and Western Carpathians, Hutsuls in the Eastern Carpathians, Karaimans in the Eastern Carpathians, and Jews in the Eastern Carpathians. The cultural diversity of Galicia can be summarized by a linguistic triad, which is also reflected in the selection of contributions in this volume.

Historical verifiability takes a backseat to the artistic truth of Galician themes and motifs, as they are rediscovered anew and individually. In doing so, one encounters once again the multinationality and multiculturalism of that forever lost Galician cosmos, whose reconstruction represents for some a literary home and for others a model of functioning interethnic relations that could hold new relevance in a new Europe.