Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg · 1906
Published in the Statistische Monatschrift, Inama-Sternegg’s review evaluates Rauchberg’s three-volume statistical investigation of nationality in Bohemia. It proceeds from the work’s documentary foundations and methods to its demographic findings and political implications. Its central claim is that systematic statistical analysis displaces partisan accounts of national conquest with an explanation grounded in migration, industrial development, and social conditions.
The opening surveys an unusually extensive evidentiary base: the censuses of 1880, 1890, and 1900, population movements, local statistics, school enumerations, landownership records, and wage inquiries. Inama-Sternegg’s praise concerns not merely the quantity of material but its analytical transformation. New groupings and calculated ratios make the tables themselves an intellectual achievement:
So ist also auch schon das Tabellenwerk keineswegs nur eine Kompilation, sondern zum großen Teile das Resultat analytischer Arbeit.
English translation: Thus even the body of tables is by no means merely a compilation, but in large part the result of analytical work.
The review likewise commends the graphics and maps for making complex territorial relationships intelligible and useful to those practically concerned with nationality questions. Moving from presentation to inference, Inama-Sternegg stresses temporal and geographical comparison as the means of establishing the relative significance of individual figures. He portrays Rauchberg’s synthesis as cautious and factual, even as it approaches political problems. Legitimate disagreement, on this account, requires renewed examination of the data, alternative groupings, or more objective formulations—not merely a contrary political standpoint. Statistical procedure thus becomes the review’s criterion of authority.
The principal finding attributed to Rauchberg is that the numerical relationship between Germans and Czechs changed little between 1880 and 1900, with any shift tending to favor the Germans. Both nationalities had maintained and developed themselves. Inama-Sternegg connects this stability to a culturally grounded collective vitality rather than to political maneuvering, and redirects attention from territorial expansion to minority populations:
Der Kernpunkt des deutsch-tschechischen Problems in Böhmen ist vielmehr die Frage der Minderheiten, welche gleichbedeutend ist mit der Frage der Wanderbewegung und der Aufsaugung des fremdsprachigen Einschlages.
English translation: The crux of the German-Czech problem in Bohemia is rather the question of the minorities, which is tantamount to the question of migratory movement and of the absorption of the foreign-language admixture.
This conceptual move makes migration and linguistic absorption central to national demography. German minorities declined in some districts, which the review attributes partly to Jews joining the majority and partly to the growth of Czech working-class populations, notably in Prague, Pilsen, and Budweis. Yet these local Czech gains were offset by stronger growth in predominantly German regions. Industrial concentration occurred chiefly in German-speaking territory, while most declining districts were Czech.
The review consequently links nationality to unequal economic geography and social position. It characterizes German minorities as belonging to upper social strata and Czech minorities as largely workers drawn into German industrial districts. Its proposed resolution retains an assimilative dimension:
Die Aufsaugung dieses tschechischen Zuzuges durch das deutsche Sprachgebiet kann nur durch Kulturarbeit und Sozialpolitik erreicht werden.
English translation: The absorption of this Czech influx by the German language area can be achieved only through cultural work and social policy.
Cultural activity and social policy are presented as the means of absorbing Czech immigration into German-speaking areas. Conversely, the Czech national task is defined as improving the economic and social condition of Czech territory rather than extending its linguistic frontier. The argument replaces external national expansion with an internal mission of bringing national culture to the wider population.
Beide Nationen können sich in diesem Programm finden; der soziale Fortschritt kann dereinst auch den nationalen Frieden bringen.
English translation: Both nations can find themselves in this programme; social progress may one day bring national peace as well.
The closing hope gives the review its wider significance: statistical knowledge is expected to redirect national conflict toward social reform. Inama-Sternegg’s enthusiastic endorsement simultaneously asserts scientific objectivity and advances a culturally national, assimilation-oriented conception of coexistence. The review’s distinctive movement is from the painstaking construction of statistical evidence to the promise that economic and cultural development might accomplish what territorial rivalry cannot.
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