VID Colloquium
WIREL Revisited – Combining Contemporary Migration Studies on Orthodox Christians in Vienna with Byzantine and South East European Studies
Mihailo Popović, Institute for Medieval Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Date: Thu, 24 Jan. 2013, Time: 11:00-12:00 am
Research in demography, by its nature, is well-suited to a contemporary and future-oriented approach. The project WIREL, which is based at the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (cf. http://vidwirel.oeaw.ac.at), addresses the role of religions in shaping the social and demographic structure of the population in the city of Vienna. WIREL aims at reconstructing, analyzing, and forecasting Vienna’s religious composition over a period ranging from 1951 to 2051. The religious groups under study are the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, the Protestants, the Muslims, the Jews, any other religions, and those without religion. These findings will be used in the evaluation of the potential for the future evolution of the religious landscape of Vienna until the middle of the 21st century. It is at this point that historical studies can contribute substantially to the overall picture of research connected to WIREL. The paper will focus on one specific religious denomination, namely the Orthodox Christians, in Vienna as well as in all of Austria. Usually a tendency can be sensed in the contemporary public discourse, which links the Orthodox Christians coming from South East Europe automatically to the so-called “Gastarbeiterbewegung” of the 1960s and the 1970s. Instead, their history and presence in Austria reaches far back to the 17th century. Thus, the paper will illustrate when Orthodox peoples started migrating to the Austrian Empire, how Orthodox merchants established themselves in Vienna and by which means they integrated themselves and were integrated into the society of that time. Furthermore it will be shown how the Orthodox faith helped in shaping identities and cultural consciousness by providing pastoral assistance as well as infrastructure in a new environment. This historical outline will help to understand better current developments and future trends with respect to Orthodox Christians living in Vienna and Austria.
About the presenter
Mihailo Popović studied at the University of Vienna (Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, South East European Studies, ancient and medieval Numismatics, Medieval Studies) where he also defended his PhD thesis in 2005. Since 2006, he has been working as a scholarly co-worker of the project Tabula Imperii Byzantini (TIB) at the Division of Byzantine Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research interests cover the historical geography of South East Europe, the history of the Late Byzantine period, the travel literature on South East Europe (14th-16th centuries), settlement theories of the Eastern Mediterranean, geoinformatics (HGIS) and (historical) cartography.