This book is a study of ethnic conflict and coexistence in the central European city of Bratislava between 1867 and 1914. The study examines the changing relations between the German, Magyar and Slovak ethnic groups in the city against the background of modernization, industrialization, and urbanization. The author argues that the boundaries between the city's ethnic groups were indistinct in this period and that ethnic affiliations and cultural identities fluctuated in response to prevailing power relations. This argument challenges the conventional division of people into neat groups as if identities were clear-cut and could be tidily defined and divided.