ABSTRACT
The chapter examines the situation of a city with a religiously and ethnically diverse population in a border region between two empires. Lviv became part of the Habsburg Monarchy as the capital of Galicia in the end of the eighteenth century and thrived because of investments in infrastructure and education. The city developed as a cultural and educational center of the imperial German culture and the local Polish nobility’s culture, the latter becoming dominant in the second half of the nineteenth century. This was challenged by the Ruthenian/Ukrainian national movement, which could act much more freely in Lviv than in neighboring Russia. During World War I, when Galicia became a battleground between Austria-Hungary and Russia, Habsburg propagandists presented Lviv as a center of European culture in the East within the Austrian concept of a state composed of different nationalities. In contrast, Russian propaganda described the city as an outpost of Russian culture that needed to be liberated and fully Russified. However, the heavy-handed Habsburg military administration and the short Russian occupation of the city were instrumental in destroying the established model of an imperial city that was characterized by the peaceful cohabitation of different groups.
