"WHAT IS DECISIVE IS THE AFFILIATION TO A PEOPLE'S TRIBE" Ethnic Diversity and Criminality Discourses in the German Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy

Ethnicised criminalisation was a widespread phenomenon in the German Empireand the Habsburg Monarchy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.Using criminological studies, police and judicial reports, and press articles, this con-tribution analyses ascriptions turning Polish and Czech people as well as other non-German groups into putatively criminal foreigners. At the same time, however, itbecomes clear that not only German actors engaged in such criminalisation: In theGerman-Czech nationality conflict in particular, the opposing sides regularly attrib-uted a proclivity for crime or violence to each other. The inclusion of differentregions of each empire as well as labour migration in the analysis also reveals a mul-tiplicity of further criminalisation tendencies.