The Habsburg International

Hari Kunzru is a novelist, journalist and professor based in New York.Founded in 2021, Do Not Research is a reader-supported publication. Each week, we publish new work from a writer, artist, filmmaker, and more:Joshua Citarella: Libertarian Neo-Monarchism (2020), Pigment Print on Canvas, 60 x 36"Searching for a phrase to describe the period of his youth before the First World War, the writer Stefan Zweig hit on “The Golden Age of Security.” For a wealthy young man, growing up in Vienna, the capital of the Habsburg Empire, “the state itself was the ultimate guarantor of durability.” It offered an ancient monarchy, a stable currency and a social order in which everyone knew their place. Zweig’s was a world in which “everything had its norm, its correct measurement and weight.” Austria-Hungary under the Emperor Franz Josef was a multinational state, one of the largest and most populous in Europe. Its subjects spoke German, Hungarian, Czech, Serbo-Croat and at least half a dozen other…