Parlamentarians in Austria 1848-1918. A collective biography

The aim of the project - which is part of a larger research project "Sources of Election History in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848-1918: Suffrage and Elections in Cisleithania/Austria" - is the creation of a collective biography of the members of the Austrian parliaments from 1848 to 1918: The project aims at recording the standard biographical information of the about 3.500 members of the 1848/49 diet, the semi-constitutional extended imperial council ("verstaerkter Reichsrat") of 1860, and the Austrian parliament (lower and upper house) from 1861 to 1918, revealing their regional, national, social and religious-denominational background and their political and professional career both in and outside of parliament. Although the data will be provided separately in a standardized format in a printed and an electronical version and will thus constitute the first biographical dictionary of the parliamentarians of old Austria, the chief importance of this project lies in creating a collective biography of the Austrian parliamentarians from 1848 to 1918, a central part of the political elite of the late Habsburg monarchy. It is by such an endeavour that it will be possible to answer a number of hitherto unsolved questions concerning the political structure of the Habsburg monarchy in a much more precise way than before.