City museums in the emerging cities of Eastern Europe, 1880–1939: Introduction

In the late nineteenth century, cities from the Austro-Hungarian, Prussian and Russian Empires gained new importance and developed ambitions to become regional and/or national centres. City museums became key vehicles with which to advance this project. Before 1918, modern urbanism was tightly interwoven with projects of nation building. After the First World War, and within the context of newly independent states, this interdependence between urbanism and nationalism was further enhanced as cities served as national capitals and important representatives of the new state. Providing case studies of Warsaw, Prague, Zagreb, Gdańsk (Danzig), and Gdynia, this special issue examines the modernising role of city museums in multi-ethnic East Central Europe, from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s. It provides important insights into the interplay of modernisation, urbanism, and nationalism, as well as the negotiation of community and identity at various levels. Urban heritage is often regarded as a product of recent postmodern economic and societal changes. Exploring the history of these city museums shows that the uses of the urban past, and the relevance to urban history in the present, have longer historical trajectories. This issue aims to provide the incentive for further, synchronically and diachronically comparative and complementary research.