Man and History

Peoples and Imagery

The understanding of foreign peoples andcultures is supported by pictures, as is the popularexperience of history. These are the pictorial expres-sions of more or less persistent ideas about thestrangeness of the" others" and the validity of one's

own culture. Wars in particular, as a form of culturalcontact filled with suffering, were a decisive elementin the formation of stereotypes of European peoples.

The idea that individual nations had certaintypical characteristics which distinguished them fromtheir neighbours was widespread throughout theAustro- Hungarian Monarchy. At the same time, theconcept" nation" was still applied until the nineteenthcentury to a small, not linguistically separated groupwithin the wider boundaries of the Dual Monarchy.

The idea of the origin of nationalities firstarose as a result of the crises within the multi- nationalstate. It became the subject of scientific interest andstarted to exert an influence on the public image ofthe national popular cultures. In the end, this was thebasis not only of the folkloric tendency during the lastdecades of the Dual Monarchy, but also of thefundamental idea of the Ethnography Museum withits comparative collections from the Austrian CrownLands.

Mechanical World Theatre

Mechanical toy display from the Prater Amusement ParkVienna, around 1850