Between Nostalgia and Nationalism: Emigrants from the Habsburg Empire in South America

Abstract

This article offers four migration narratives from three states—Brazil, Argentina, and Chile—including biographic approaches and group identities, cultural nostalgia and nationalist resentment. The divergent trajectories of the Dalmatian business tycoons Nicolás Mihanovich in Argentina and Pascual Baburizza in Chile, the celebration of inter-ethnic Austrian-ness in Ijuí (Brazil) vs. the symbolic construction of a “second Poland” by Polish immigrants in Paraná (Brazil) seek to open different windows into the highly complex panorama of Austrian-Hungarian emigration to Latin America. Although approximately 300,000 Habsburg subjects sought there their new homeland, the topic remains underresearched.

Keywords

• habsburg empire
• south america
• nationalism
• supranational identity