Identity Construction and State Loyalties of Otmar Babić

Abstract

This paper provides a study case of the First World War Croatian Major General Otmar Babić. It investigates the post-First World War national identity construction and shifting state loyalties of this Austro-Hungarian high-ranking military official in three different state regimes: the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes / Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and Independent State of Croatia. In view of the limited scope of this paper, the presented preliminary findings are narrowly focused on the text — on Otmar Babić’s statements in various types of narrations. His personal records are treated as narrations that belong to the historization of warfare experience — a military history from below. Therefore, this micro-level sociological study has analyzed developed discourse and discursive practices reflected in the correspondence between Major General Babić and state institutions, and his private, more intimate, writings expressed in poetry. Otmar Babic’s statements have been analyzed and treated as social representations expressed in discourse about the impact of the First World War on his life. Foucauldian discourse analysis applied as methodology has therefore, enabled to do qualitative sociological research into the shifting nature of Otmar Babić’s identity construction in different state regimes, as well as into his shifting state loyalties after the First World War when he was retired. Otmar Babić’s case provides a subjective account of the military past and post-war life and represents a source of First World War history from a personal perspective and a true testimony to the long lost Croatian cultural memory.