Fellow Citizens or Aliens? Galician Refugees during the First World War in Hungary

Abstract

The outbreak of the First World War (1914–1918) forced the countless civilians to leave their homes and to become war refugees. This topic has remained largely unexplored by the historians. The number of refugees from the multinational Galicia in the years 1914–1918 was large in many parts of the former Austria-Hungary, which finds its reflection in archival materials scattered over various archives and over an extensive territory. This paper presents the issue of the Galician war refugees who found themselves in the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen. It also outlines the general problem of emigration as well as describes relations between the refugees and the local people. It was not only due to antagonisms but also due to the administrative decisions of the Hungarian authorities that the Galician refugees remained alien to the locals, despite the fact they all were citizens of the same Habsburg Monarchy.