Börries Kuzmany

The historian Börries Kuzmany works on the history of Eastern Europe and the Habsburg Empire. His ERC project Non-Territorial Autonomy as Minority Protection in Europe: An Intellectual and Political History of a Travelling Idea, 1850-2000 investigates a little-known concept of how to deal with national diversity within a state. In the case of non-territorial autonomy, the holder of self-government is neither the individual nor a specified area but the ethnic group itself, which is understood as a corporate unit. This ERC project explores how this idea emerged in the Habsburg Monarchy in theory and practice. Furthermore, our team addresses the ideological adaptability of this concept in inter-war Eastern Europe. Finally, we investigate the extent to which non-territorial forms of autonomy were discussed in European debates on the protection of minorities.