The 'Neue Freze Presse' and the South Slavs of the Habsburg monarchy, 1867-1914

This article seeks to assess how educated Austro-German opinion regarded the South of the Dual Monarchy, on the basis of the reportage of the Neue Freie Presse (NFP). Applying Pieter Judson's thesis of the relationship between universalism and nationalism in Austro-German liberalism to the South Slavs, it concludes that the NFP's scornful equation of the German-Slav relationship in terms of progress and backwardness, though not without sociological force, hampered full understanding of the forces in play. Exploring the way in which the paper's treatment of the Croatian question reflected its changing attitude to the Hungarians and the Dualist system as a whole, it shows how initial hostility to the Magyars yielded to somewhat complacent support for Hungarian policy, reinforcing this tendency