Galicia was created at the first partition of Poland in 1772 and disappeared in 1918. Yet, in slightly over a century, the idea of Galicia came to have meaning for both the peoples who lived there and the Habsburg government that ruled it. Indeed, its memory continues to exercise a powerful fascination for those who live in its former territories and for the descendants of those who emigrated out of Galicia. The idea of Galicia was largely produced by the cultures of two cities, Lviv and Cracow. Making use of travelers' accounts, newspaper reports, and literary works, Wolff engages such figures as Emperor Joseph II, Metternich, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Ivan Franko, Stanislaw Wyspianski, Tadeusz "Boy" Zelenski, Isaac Babel, Martin Buber, and Bruno Schulz. He shows the exceptional importance of provincial space as a site for the evolution of cultural meanings and identities, and analyzes the province as the framework for non-national and multi-national understandings of empire in European history.
Larry Wolff is Professor of History at New York University. His works include Venice and the Slavs (Stanford 2001) and Inventing Eastern Europe (Stanford 199
"We have a book that is so innovative in its approach, so broad in its inclusion of sources, and so brilliant in its examination of culture and zeitgeist in its account of over a century and a half of the Galician idea and reality that we can only admire the feast laid out before us... For all intellectual historians Wolff's book is a treasure trove and a delight." - Frank Sysyn, South East Europe Review for Labour & Social Affairs "The Idea of Galicia is highly recommended not only for those working on the modern history of Eastern Europe but also for anyone interested in the shaping of the modern world and modern culture. As an intellectual history that brings together the cultural, political, and social, the book will be extremely useful in a variety of graduate courses. The author is to be commended for producing a highly original, engaging, and powerful book, a real tour de force in the growing field of Galician studies." - Andriy Zayarnyuk, Journal of Modern History "Brilliantly written, rich in factual details and insightful interpretations, this monograph establishes a new model for a history of the Eastern European imperial borderland." - Ostap Sereda, Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas "Wolff's way of telling the story of how the idea of Galicia evolved throughout the nineteenth century is a dense narrative in which a variety of sources are related or juxtaposed to create multiple contexts - historical, political, social, intellectual, cultural... The scope and quality of Larry Wolff's scholarship makes The Idea of Galicia an impressive achievement. Not only has the author made a major contribution to the history of Galicia and to historiography, but he has also set a high standard for historical writing." - Jolanta Pekacz, Canadian Journal of History "Not only will this be the definitive book on Galicia as a whole for years to come; it represents the best of modern intellectual history ... For a historian of this period and place, The Idea of Galicia is a veritable treasure trove, one that rewards close reading with countless new and thought-provoking insights." - Patrice M. Dabrowski, Nationalities Papers"[Larry Wolff is] a historian capable of grand synthesis ... [The Idea of Galicia is] refreshingly free from terminological jargon, rich in sources, and overflows with imagination and insight." - Robert Pyrah, Austrian History Yearbook
