Günter Dinhobl (Hrsg.): Sonderband 7. Eisenbahn/Kultur – Railway/Culture (2004)
Aufsätze - Günter Dinhobl: Prologue for “Railway / Culture”
Günter Dinhobl tionship(s) between these two terms and secondly to imagine technology as a part of culture - and not as an opposition. The workshop series accompanied a research project which was supervised by Univ. Prof. Dr. Gerhard Strohmeier and was funded by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF; www.fwf.ac.at ) in the years from 2000 to 2004. Within this project “a sort of cultural history on rails” (Austrian daily newspaper Der Standard, 15. 3. 2003) was written: both printed and unprinted sources dealing with railways from the Austrian Empire (Kaisertum Österreich) - which are both available in an extensive number at the Austrian State Archive (ÖStA; www.oesta.gv.at ) - were reread and reappraised for the technology railway’s contribution to culture (informations on the research project “The General Demand for Fast Communications” (Ghega, 1844). About the constructions of “culture on the example of Austrian railway engineers 1824-1857” see URL: http://www.iff.ac.at/kwa/projekte_eisenbahn_kultur.php , 2. 2. 2004). As the workshop-series “Railway/Culture” approached, speakers were invited - according to their areas of research - to work out technical as well as cultural aspects of railways and present them within the scope of the workshops. The overall objective was to present - and discuss - a wide range of approaches and methods of culturally orientated scholarship. What kind of reciprocal relations do railway and culture have? How can railway and culture be reflected together? Why is a cultural approach to transportation technology railway of interest ? What realizations and findings can be expected? This volume documents nearly all contributions of the workshop series and gives a first qualitative overview of the very wide range on this subject. So this publication is like a snapshot of a learning process and it aims to stimulate future research beyond a positivistic understanding of technology or a nostalgic-idealized historiography. The contributions in this volume are divided into four chapters: The first chapter addresses conceptual and methodical issues and serves as an introduction to the subject matter. Günter Dinhobl makes a plea for wider integration of cultural issues in the history of technology and after that Michel Cotte outlines the interweaving and interactions of railway and culture using the early railways in France as an example. The perception of space is culturally encoded to a very high degree and the technologies of transportation - like railways - are of great importance to this matter. These are 18
