Streetscapes of War and Revolution

Prague entered the First World War as the third city of the Habsburg empire but emerged in 1918 as the capital of a brand new nation-state Czechoslovakia. Claire Morelon explores what this transition looked sounded and felt like at street level. Through deep archival research she has carefully reconstructed the sensorial texture of the city from the posters plastered on walls to the shop windows'' displays the badges worn by passers-by and the crowds gathering for protest or celebration. The result is both an atmospheric account of life amid war and regime change and a fresh interpretation of imperial collapse from below in which the experience of life on the Habsburg home-front is essential to understanding the post-Versailles world order that followed. Prague is the perfect case study for examining the transition from empire to nation-statehood hinging on revolutionary dreams of fairer distribution and new forms of political participation.