Authors

Petra Babić¹;  ¹ Catholic University of Croatia, Croatia

Discussion

The Military Frontier was a cordon sanitaire dividing the Habsburg Empire from the Ottoman Empire, which existed from the 16th century to 1881, and consisted of parts of Croatian and Hungarian territories. Its population consisted of Wehrbauern and their families, i.e. a peasant population that was granted special privileges, and was in turn obliged to defend the border and provide military service to the state. In that society, organized cultural life was practically non-existent and the military had an overbearing impact on all strata of society. However, in the middle of the 18th century a number of towns were elevated to the newly devised status of Militär-Kommunitäten, towns exempted from military service. In these towns, the civilian population began to grow and formed the basis for the development of organized cultural life in this area.
During the 19th century, some elements of civil society came into existence in these towns. In the domain of culture, these were primarily singing choirs and reading societies, as well as institutions such as Musikvereins. While the private initiatives and societies usually remained in the civil sphere, and their activities often reflected echoes of national movements taking place in civil Croatia, the institutions in the Military Frontier area always had dual (civilian and military) function, the military one being often more dominant. Good examples of that practice were orchestras (ranging from fully military Regimental orchestras to semi-military Town Guard’s orchestras, but lacking an orchestra that would be exclusively civilian in nature) and music schools (that in theory were intended to provide music education for talented children of its Militär-Kommunität, but whose main purpose in reality was to educate future players in the Regimental orchestra). However, this strong military aura of the entire society came to an end with two disruptions: the ‘soft one’ in the demilitarization of 1873 (when the regiments were disbanded and civilian institutions were introduced in the administration of the Military Frontier), and the ‘hard one’ in 1881, when the territory of Croatian Military Frontier was reincorporated with the Kingdom of Croatia. After these two disruptions, cultural life in the former military territory started to flourish with the establishment of new cultural societies multiplying tenfold in comparison with the previous period. In addition, the old societies and institutions noticeably increased the intensity and widened the scope of their activities.
In this paper, I intend to explore cultural institutions, societies and events in the Military Frontier before and after these two disruptions that enabled the former military-dominated territory to begin its transformation into civil society. These processes were also attempts to catch up with the rest of civil Croatia in the domain of culture.