Die Spanische Grippe Und Die Habsburgermonarchie: Gesundheitspolitik, Multiple Krisen Und Staatszerfall

When the second wave of Spanish flu broke out in the fall of 1918, the Habsburg Empire was already in its final political death struggle. Its military was on the verge of collapse, the economy was in ruins, the supply situation was precarious and millions of war returnees, refugees and prisoners of war were on the move. Against this backdrop, the government of the young Emperor Charles I accomplished a political pioneering deed in August 1918: under the leadership of the Prague professor Ivan Horbachevsky it established the first European Ministry of Public Health. Like all of the empire's institutions, it was now under enormous pressure to cope with the many simultaneous crises. This book examines how the Ministry, as well as the health authorities in the centers and on the periphery of the Habsburg Empire, dealt with the enormous challenge of the pandemic.