Building a Regional Identity:The Burgenland, 1921–1938

Abstract

Although the literature on nation building is truly vast, scholars have paid relatively little attention to the formation of regional identities. This is in large part because those who specialize in regionalism have argued that state and region form an essentially contradictory relationship. This article analyzes one example of how a hitherto indistinct geographical entity was fashioned into a federal province and how its political elite complied with a constant need to popularize and entrench the concept of the region. The new regional identity was thus designed to counteract two challenges to its very existence as a federal province: one from the former mother state, Hungary, and the other from Austria, where consideration was given to dividing the newly created entity between two neighboring federal provinces. The outcome of this attempt was the creation of a regional identity, albeit one mostly defined in negative terms.