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The governments of the newly formed and expanded states of Habsburg Central Europe began remaking society in formerly imperial spaces following Austria-Hungary's defeat in 1918. Austria-Hungary's demise as a geopolitical unit did not mean the disappearance of its administrative and juridical apparatus, some of which functioned well into the interwar era. Because bureaucratic transition did not necessarily parallel political transition, there was often no immediate, dramatic change in the regulation of prostitution--or the treatment of prostitutes and women assumed to be prostitutes--in these states. Some officials/police maintained that prostitution was a "necessary evil," and sought its continued regulation, while others sought its abolition. This article analyzes continuity and change in the treatment of prostitutes in prewar/wartime Cisleithanian Austria and postwar Venezia Giulia and Slovenia. Neighboring provinces under the Habsburg Monarchy, Italy occupied the former in late 1918, while the latter became part of Yugoslavia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a case study on influenza epidemic in Koper (Capodistria) between the autumn of 1918 and the spring of 1919. The epidemic outbreak is placed within the context of a long-lasting indigence, malnutrition (protein low and deficient food) and poverty, which was a direct consequence of the war and which strongly affected the immunity of the population in the region, with Trieste and smaller Istrian coastal towns included. Besides, chaotic political situation (war ending, changing of authorities and establishing provisional administrative structures after the end of the Austrian rule and before the final reestablishment of Italian authority in the Julian March) was not in favour of the hard situation and led to disorganized confrontation with health issues, absence of physicians and medicine shortage s. The paper tries to reconstruct the epidemic situation through scarce quantitative data (parish registers) and narrative sources (newspapers, memoirs, school chronicles etc.). Methodological obstacles in evidencing the appearance of this disease, are especially regarding inconsequent and non-uniform recording of the cause of death in the parish registers, lack of morbidity data due to non-obligatory announcing of influenza cases, prevalence of political topics but also the censorship, to which the daily (and other) press of the time was subjected. Despite these limitations, the paper tries to contribute, at least in part, to the deficient knowledge about the living conditions and social circumstances of the civilian population within the Julian March at the very end of the World War I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]