Abstract
In 1910 the Crownland Moravia was confidentially granted a 5 million loan by the Viennese government. Moravia was heavily indebted and spent extensive expenditures for schooling, infrastructure and social welfare. The secret loan to Moravia was just one part of the multi-tiered system of fiscal flows in late Imperial Austria that was subject to emotionally heated debates. Since the budgetary power in the regional, transnational and imperial arenas came with determining the political priorities there, negotiations of the budget mirrored conflicting political camps often divided along national lines. On the imperial level, however, the same politicians forged transnational cooperation and new forms of transnational revenue sharing. Utterances of emotions were made more objective the higher the political level the crownland’s leading officials dealt with. The emotional side of fiscal politics, however, can be seen as a driving force in prioritising certain policy fields.