ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the multifaceted realities of women’s activism and expressions of literary modernism in women’s writing across the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1867–1918) via selected examples from the great variety that characterized this multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic empire. Building on the historical background of the first women’s philanthropic organizations and salons in the region, which started forming at the beginning of the 19th century, the author moves on to examine the link between the national movements and women’s organizations; the fight for women’s education; the role of women’s professional associations; women’s alliances both within the Monarchy’s borders and beyond; and addresses the numerous themes both along and beyond what the organized women’s movement fought for in the works of women writers who wrote in the Monarchy’s many languages. The author also reflects on the long legacies of women’s organizing and creative output and how they can help us better understand post-World War I, interwar, and even post-World War II as well as contemporary developments in the regions of the former Monarchy. The political and fictional writings of these women also carry an incredible potential to invite reflection on how to transgress borders that were, and continue to be, all too narrowly defined.
