It is the purpose of this paper to show that the language policy of the nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire can be considered a promising example of multilingual management and planning because, as a model of lived multilingualism, it shows a potential that projects into present-day multilingual Europe. The present paper elaborateson Habsburg language policy, which stood in stark contrast to the dominant nineteenth-century ideology of homogeneous nation-states. As this policy was far from a unified or streamlined model, this paper investigates three specific domains — education, administration and the judiciary — in the different crown-lands of Bohemia, Galicia and Trieste, where the struggle over multilingualism and for power escalated during the nineteenth century.