Propaganda Without a Patron: Max Müller, Prince Wied, and the Politics of Intellectual Influence in World War I Albania

This article examines Albaniens Zukunft (1916), a wartime pamphlet by the German intellectual Max Müller, as a case of ‘propaganda from the margins’: an individual intervention operating outside state institutions and academia. Framing his vision through the authority of ‘scientific’ knowledge, Müller defended Prince Wilhelm von Wied’s legitimacy and proposed a reformist, Austro-German-aligned Albania, despite Austria-Hungary’s wartime shift towards direct imperial administration. Drawing on Jacques Ellul’s distinction between integration and agitation propaganda, the article situates the pamphlet within Austro-Hungarian political communication and the declining project of Wied’s monarchy, showing how scholarly discourse intersected with imperial policy debates. Though politically marginal and ultimately unable to influence imperial policy, Albaniens Zukunft exemplifies ‘propaganda from the margins’, revealing how extra-institutional intellectuals could sustain political visions through epistemic authority and informal networks. The article thus reconsiders the role of knowledge production in shaping imperial political imaginaries during the First World War.