Habsburg civil servants between civil society and the state

"As the Habsburg Empire became a modern state, daily life in the Habsburg domains increasingly involved interactions with civil servants. Bureaucratic institutions addressed diverse social problems: education, public transportation, a post and telegraph system, health services, and an independent judiciary. This volume explores the lives of Habsburg civil servants of diverse professions and geographic locations from the nineteenth century. Chapters reveal the individual and collective agency they derived from their unique social position as servants of the state who simultaneously embodied bourgeois habitus. The volume enriches the field of Habsburg studies by examining civil servants as much more than particles in the faceless state machine but as human beings, which in turn helps explore the convoluted question of where the state ends and the public begins."-- Provided by publisher