The project is an interdisciplinary, transnational cooperation project, involving cultural
anthropologists and historians from Klagenfurt, Ljubljana and Koper.
It aims at surveying and analysing the "in-between" in the Alps-Adriatic Region from 1815 to
1914 in terms of the economic, cultural and social practices as well as language practices of the
people living in the three cities of Klagenfurt, Ljubljana and Trieste at that time. There were
manifold cultural, economic and political-administrative relations between these cities. The free
trade harbour of Trieste was a common point of reference for Klagenfurt and Ljubljana.
Klagenfurt was an important hub for the transport of people and goods from the northern
territories to Carniola (Ljubljana) and Trieste. All three cities underwent a process of
nationalisation towards the end of the 19th century. After the First World War, Klagenfurt
became part of Austria, the state that followed on from the Monarchy. Ljubljana was assigned
to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and Trieste to Italy.
The inevitable formation of nation states is currently the dominant narrative of the history of
the Alps-Adriatic region. In contrast, the project is based on the assumption that the process of
the formation of nation states was not clear-cut. It assumes proceeds on the assumption that the
affiliation to the respective nations was also characterised by an "in-between", sometimes even
by an indifference - referred to as "national indifference". The terms "in-between" and "national
indifference" refer to different dimensions of everyday and working life, which cannot solely
be explained by an affiliation to nation states (e.g. gender, language, class, religion). They
manifest, for example, in the use of several languages, in transnational trade relations, in joint
leisure pursuits in associations and in family relations across national borders.
The objective of the project is to render these developments comprehensible and to tell a "new
history" of the Alps-Adriatic region, which has so far been presented mainly as a history of
nationalisation, characteristic of Central Europe. By engaging with "national indifference", the
project also aims to contribute to a key concept in historical research and the social sciences.
Taking the three cities of Klagenfurt, Ljubljana and Trieste as examples, the project explores
the forms of the "in-between" which can be found: (1) in discourses articulated in contemporary
ethnographies, (2) in practices to be found in associations and institutions, marked by their
cultural, social, religious and economic relations and (3) on the basis of unpublished diaries,
letters or autobiographies of persons living at the time.