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A Compilation of Presentations from Lewes U3A’s Spring Term Course 2019 on ‘The Habsburg Empire 1804-1918’

General Introduction:

Our course of 33 people and 5 sessions ran from January 16 to March 13.

To avoid possible issues with copyright only written presentations are included here, and not all texts were available for compilation. These texts were originally written as aides to oral presentations. The missing illustrations can, of course, be found by googling.

A limited period in history was chosen, an outline for each session was suggested and a possible list of source material given. At the first session, after an introduction to the subject, various topics were chosen by individuals and groups of two or three people for researching and future presentation in an approximately chronological order. The flexibility of the course enabled considerable input from members so that each session was not necessarily as originally outlined.

The convenor’s role was to link the sessions and presentations together so that a reasonably comprehensive coverage was achieved.

Of course, it was not possible in the time available, to cover all the suggested topics.

A Course Outline – Lewes U3A, Spring Term 2019

The Habsburg Empire 1804- 1918

‘The situation is hopeless, but not serious’.

Some Possible Aims and objectives:

1. To engage as many U3A members as possible in presentations and activities.

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2. To try, if at all possible to look at the events in Central Europe through the eyes and attitudes of the 19th Century people who lived there at that time rather than as enlightened 21st Century Lewesians.

3. To compare and contrast the history of the Habsburg Empire with the history of the Germany which ultimately became the Second German Reich in 1871.

4. To consider in the light of the history of the attempted unification of Europe, how and why the Habsburgs ultimately failed to establish a stable and democratic order in a multi-ethnic and multilingual state on the basis of democracy and federalism.

5. To consider the great upsurge in artistic, musical, architectural, literary, theatrical and psychological activity in the Empire during the 19th Century, centred particularly on Vienna and Prague.

6. To take into account additional subjects suggested by members.

Method:To voluntarily divide the group into approximately 10 subgroups, each group to choose their own subject for presentation from their inclination, or from the suggested list under each session number.

Approximately 3 different subgroups to present at the following 4 sessions, in an approximately chronological order. MWA will try to link up each session by providing an introduction.

Session 1, January 16: Setting the Scene

Welcome

Introduction

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1. Why call it the Habsburg Empire and not the Austrian-Hungarian Empire?(The difficulties of pinning down titles)

2. Why are we limiting it to 1804-1918?(MWA’s nervous breakdown)

3. What happened before 1804? In brief.(Possibility of more U3A Courses for the next 5 years !)

4. Division into groups(Again voluntary, of course)

Session 2, January 30: The Beginning of a New Age

The House of Habsburg-Lorraine.

The Imperial Recess 1803

The founding of the Austrian Empire with Francis II as Emperor

Defeat by the French. The Battles of Ulm and Austerlitz 1805.

The Austrian Humiliation at the Treaty of Pressburg

The Confederation of the Rhine

Battle of the Nations at Leipzig 1813

Congress of Vienna 1815.

The German Confederation

Klemens Metternich and the Concert of Europe.

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Stagnation or Consolidation?

The Different Peoples, Languages, Religions and Lands of the Habsburg Monarchy.

The Cultural Importance of Vienna in music, literature, theatre and architecture

Session 3, February 13: The Defeat of Constitutional Liberalism

The Revolutions of 1848 and the Habsburg Empire

Absolutist Government

The ‘four armies’ of Bach: ‘a standing army of soldiers, a sitting army of office holders, a kneeling army of priests and a fawning army of sneaks’.

Czech nation movement

First War of Schleswig 1848-50

Second War of Schleswig 1864

Austro-Prussian War 1866

The Making of Dualism 1866-7: The Austrian-Hungarian EmpireCisleithania and Transleithania

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Miscellaneous Topics:Currency and TradeGovernmentAdministrationPoliticsEthnic RelationsThe Jewish Population of the EmpireForeign PolicyEconomyCars, planes and trainsInfrastructureDemographicsEducationAustro-Hungarian Military HistoryDecline and Fall of Austrian aspirations– German ascendancy in Austria 1867-79

Session 4, February 24 The Struggle of the Nationalities and the Tragedies of Franz Joseph:

The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf and the murder of Empress Elizabeth.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia’s Muslims

Habsburg recovery 1879-93

Hungary after 1867

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Indian summer 1897- 1908

The Vienna Secession: Klimt and Schiele.

Architecture: Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, The Ringstrasse

Music: Schonberg; Poetry: Rainer Maria Rilke, Oscar Kocoska

Philosophy: Wittigstein

Industry and the Railways of the Empire

The Austrian-Hungarian Civil Service as a linchpin of the Hapsburg Monarchy

Session 5, March 13: War and Disintegration, Paranoia and the Interpretation of Dreams

Violent Solutions 1908 -14

The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand

The End of the Habsburgs 1914-18

Establishment of Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia

The Theories of Freud and the Trials of Kafka

Retrospective

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Some Suggested Sources

YouTube

Part 1 of a series on the Habsburg Empire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwTi85Ni3a8

Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV8hcbkreJY

‘Vienna-City of Dreams’, one man’s views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFZBOTgL_Hk

Fiction

The Good Soldier Svejk Jaroslav Hasek (comic)

Radetzky March and The Emperor’s Tomb Joseph Roth (emotionally insightful into the loss of national identity)

The Trial Franz Kafka’s nightmare tale of bureaucracy and prosecution.

Non-Fiction

Introductions to the Habsburg Empire:

1. The Habsburg Empire 1804-1918 Hans Kohn, Anvil Books (second hand only)

2. The Habsburg Empire: A very short introduction Martyn Rady

The Habsburg Empire Pieter M Judson (published 2016, paperback: ‘does much to destroy the picture of an ossified regime and state’)

The World of Yesterday Stefan Zweig (on dislocation)

The Habsburg Monarchy 1809-1918 AJP Taylor (an academic gold standard)

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The Balkans 1804-1999 Misha Glenny (background reading)

Napoleon the Great Andrew Roberts (on the French ‘opposition’)

Danubia Simon Winder (an easy, fun read)

Vanished Kingdoms Norman Davies (on the transience of statehood)

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914 Christopher Clark (How did we get into this mess?)

Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse (Presslaw-as a representative Habsburg city)

The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire 1815-1918 Alan Sked, who has written several books on the Empire

Metternich, Councillor of Europe Alan Palmer

Pioneers of Modern Design Nicolaus Pevsner

Films

Sisi 1955 German language film about Elizabeth, wife of Franz Joseph

Mayerling 1968 An all-star cast portray Archduke Rudolf and his mistress’s tragic history

Trotta 1971 German film based on Roth’s book ‘The Emperor’s Tomb’

The Illusionists 2006 Magic and the Habsburg Aristocracy

The Trial 1962 Orson Welles’s film of Kafka’s book.

If you have a DVD of any of these films, please bring them along and we could possibly show a scene or two and discuss them.

Podcasts

‘In Our Time’ BBC Radio 4

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Kafka’s Trial 27 November 2014

Siege of Vienna 14 May 2009

Congress of Vienna 19 April 2017

Free Audio Guide Vienna Museums

See www.hearonymous.com and download on the App Store

Session 1: Introduction to the Habsburg Empire

SLIDE How to build, but more significantly, how to hold together a massive, united structure in the face of a multitude of languages, when each language represents a different nationality and each nationality having its own particular religious beliefs and history? I can think of no better allegory for the supranational Habsburg Empire than Pieter Bruegel’s, the Elder, painting of the Tower of Babel now in the History of Art Museum, Vienna.

The Habsburg Empire represented here in heraldic form SLIDE, gives us an indication of the possible complexity of the subject. The common medium coat of arms of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in use between 1867 and 1915 like all seemingly complex things can be simply broken down into its component parts: So we have the lesser common coat of arms of the Habsburg-Lorraine family from 1804 with anticlockwise the arms of the Kingdom of Hungary, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and the Archduchy of Austria and so on added to it. Similarly the complex story of the Habsburg Empire can be broken down into small bite size pieces, easily swallowed and then digested. And so on.

The first question we can ask ourselves is to give a precise name to the subject. Just as the distinct period in German history between

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1919 and 1933 was never known at that time as the ‘Weimar Republic’ but the German Reich; so the Empire of the Habsburgs which was dissolved in 1918 never had a fixed name nor was it a clearly defined entity. For three hundred years to 1740 it was known as the ‘lands of the House of Habsburgs’ or the ‘lands of the Holy Roman Emperor’ as of course the Habsburgs were nearly without exception the Holy Roman Emperors from the 15th Century onwards. How did this near monopoly of the title come about?

Only between 1740 and 1745 did the Imperial Title pass out of Habsburg hands during the reign of Maria Teresa who was never to be known as the Holy Roman Empress, as there was no precedent or protocol for females to be this she served only as a de facto ruling empress of Austria. Even in Austria she could only officially call herself ‘King of Hungary’ although her empire was not Hungary. How come then that she was able to rule Austria but not the Holy Roman Empire? And how did she become such an important and well- loved figure? SLIDE

In 1804, when our story proper begins, Francis II, SLIDE saw the writing was on the wall for a Holy Roman Emperor because of the ascendancy of Napoleon Bonaparte crowning himself as Emperor of France, and so Francis invented the title ‘Emperor of Austria’ for himself and his successors becoming Francis I in the process. This was only a dynastic name as the Empire was still the Empire of the House of Austria, making it his personal possession. It was not the Empire of the Austrians. In 1867 the nation of Hungary claimed a very uneasy partnership with the Emperor and the Austrian Empire changed shape and name again and in its simplest terms became known as ‘Austria-Hungary’. But there were many non-Heriditary lands such as Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Galicia, Transylvania, Dalmatia, Croatia and Serbia, all with their own nationalities, religions, languages and conflicting demands which remained outside of this Austria-Hungary

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title until the very end. SLIDE And then beyond. Why were they never satisfactorily fully incorporated into the empire and why were they such a source of trouble to the Habsburgs and each other?

One official name for the ‘Austria-Hungarian’ Empire was ‘The Kingdom and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council’ that was the Austrian bit and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of St Stephen. Of course it was the Habsburg monarch who was always both: Emperor of Austria and simultaneously King of Hungary and again it will be important to consider the historical reasons for this.

Unofficially the Austrian lands were known as Cisleithania, being this side of the Leitha River, a branch of the Danube and the Hungarian lands as Transleithania. being beyond the Leitha river a SLIDE

Finally, as Austria and Hungary, geographically formed part of the Danube Basin many writers talk about Danubia SLIDE But this description cannot of course include lands geographically far distant from the Danube and situated in say part of the Elbe valley such as Silesia. SLIDE

So is it best to stick to calling it the ‘Habsburg Empire’?

Although is it strictly speaking the Habsburg Empire we are talking about? Because the House of Habsburg actually became extinct in the 18th century. The senior Spanish branch ended upon the death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and was replaced by the House of Bourbon. SLIDE The Austrian branch became extinct in the male line in 1740 with the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI and completely in 1780 with the death of his eldest daughter Maria Theresa of Austria. Maria Theresa was married to Francis III, Duke of Lorraine, so their descendants were of the House of Lorraine, but they called themselves House of Habsburg-Lorraine and so historians for convenience unofficially use the term Habsburg Monarchy for

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both the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg between 1521 and 1780 and then the successor branch of Habsburg-Lorraine until 1918. Why despite so many promising marriages did major branches of the Habsburg dynasty die out? And are there any Habsburgs today?

Our next challenge is one of time. With the all the temptations of the rich history of the Habsburgs from the 11th Century onwards why do we have to limit our course to between 1804-1918? We will in our last session discuss the heritage of the Habsburg dynasty after it ended suddenly in 1918. The period onwards from 1804 corresponds nicely with that of our previous German history course on the first unification of Germany and the rise of Prussia as the most powerful state in mainland Europe. So one relevant question could be to ask why was it in the 19th century that there was not a Greater German solution including Austria instead of the one that happened on the 12th March 1938? In addition can any of the problems of Central Europe in the 19th Century have particular relevance to us today in the 21st century. For example: one question we could try and answer is ‘How can or is it even possible that different nations with different languages and histories be bought together in a federal state?’ Is this as relevant to the problems of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in the UK as it is to the currently 28 member countries of the European Union?

Our penultimate challenge is to try and understand how the Empire lasted so long despite its deficiencies and failures and went on to become the third most populous empire after Russia and the United Kingdom. Despite, or was it because that some of the Habsburg Emperors were inept or procrastinators? Was it only because of good administration and an overarching bureaucracy that it survived so long and in fact achieved a great deal ? How was it particularly early on in the Habsburg story that the few cunning Emperors were able to

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manipulate to their advantage the events that were outside their control, but which seemed to effortlessly fall into their hands? Such as convenient deaths and very advantageous inter dynastic marriages. And of course it was not just land they received from Venus, the goddess of love, but genetic deformity. How did this genetic deformity occur? SLIDE

Another question is from what point of view shall we to look at our subject? Do we look at it from the aspect of educated and enlightened Lewisians of today or from the point of view of the majority of the people that lived in the Habsburg Empire at that time? Slide Were these predominantly country dwellers and peasants? and until nearly the Twentieth Century were they all disenfranchised, illiterate and mostly non-German speaking? Would they have had any views at all on history or politics of that period or even of the question of nationality? Did they only or even feel loyalty to the dynasty? Perhaps their only concern was where the next meal for themselves and their family was going to come from or whether there was enough tobacco for their pipes? Will therefore the history that we will be considering be largely that of the aristocracy, intelligentsia and academics? Was there even a middle class?

A very relevant question is did the Habsburg Empire even have a purpose? Other European powers thought so up to a point in time. Was the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire due to it no longer serving this purpose?

A final question for you? Can you find a hero or heroine to focus on and cherish amongst the many emperors, aristocrats and politicians we will be talking about? Probably not amongst the emperors or politicians, except perhaps Joseph II (and he falls outside of our era) and was Metternich a hero just for keeping the peace for so long? Was their perhaps just one heroine? SLIDE So ladies and gentleman,

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as you can see there are as many questions as there are people here and we only have four more sessions, less than 9 hours remaining. Perhaps you will agree with me that the situation is hopeless, but hopefully with your help, not serious.

The House of Habsburg

I have said that for reasons of time we could not cover in detail what happened before 1804. But obviously it is important to provide some contextual background on the House of Habsburg.

Rudolf of Habsburg SLIDE was elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1272. His family had important possessions in southwest Germany, in Swabia and in Switzerland. Slide

In 1282 Rudolf I invested his sons with the duchies of Austria and Styria. The Habsburgs abandoned the Italy-centred imperial ambitions of the Hohenstaufen, the house which preceded them as Emperors.

The only concern of the Habsburgs, even from the beginning, was to strengthen the power of their family or house: the Hausmacht in German.

Through acquisition and dynastic marriages the territory under their rule increased. Peacefully, by the 14th century they had acquired Carinthia, Carniola, Tyrol, Istria and Trieste, becoming one of the most powerful princely German families. Duke Rudolf IV SLIDE (if you have a good family name stick to it) introduced for his family the new more powerful title of Archduke. Through the privilegium maius , the first of several forged documents that the Habsburgs used to increase their power and prestige, he tried to establish the independence of his lands separate from the German lands. In 1365 he founded the

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University of Vienna (by comparison Oxford University was founded about 1100) and began to build St Stephen’s Cathedral. SLIDE He continued the family policy of intermarriage started by his ancestor Rudolf of Habsburg with marriage with the ruling houses of the neighbouring kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary.

From 1438 the Habsburgs became Holy Roman Emperors until the empire’s demise in 1806, except for the few years previously mentioned. The words Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg were nearly synonymous.

Archduke Frederick V became Emperor in 1440 although he ‘seemed asleep on his throne’ But through the marriage of his son Maximillian SLIDE with the heiress of Burgundy and the Netherlands and the marriage of his grandson Charles to the heiress of Spain and the New World he laid the foundations of a world empire.

We mentioned before the break that the Habsburg Empire fulfilled purposes that were deemed useful to the rest of Europe which gave it is raison d’etre and that only when the Habsburg Empire served no purpose did it finally collapsed. Well, of Maximillian two grandsons Charles V, who we have just mentioned, was Holy Roman Emperor from 1519 to 1556 and Ferdinand I who followed him 1556 to 1564. These two Emperors faced the twin tasks that faced the Habsburgs and Europe for the next two centuries:

Firstly the defence of Central Europe against the Turks and Secondly the defence of the Catholic Church against the Protestant Reformation.

Charles V and his descendants ruled in Spain, over the Spanish possessions in Italy, the Low Countries and the New World. Ferdinand and his descendants ruled in Austria.

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From the connection with Spain, the Austrian Habsburgs adopted the spirit of the militant Counter Reformation, the Art of the Baroque SLIDE, and the Spanish court ceremonial. More important was the union of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary achieved in 1526 by the Viennese double marriage of Maximillian’s grandchildren having taken place 10 years previously. SLIDE This occurred when King Louis II of Bohemia and Hungary died without issue in the battle of Mohács against the Turks and the Habsburgs inherited the two crowns.

The Turkish victory at Mohács led to them occupying the greater part of Hungary and laying siege to Vienna in 1529. In the 17th century the Habsburgs faced the allied powers of Louis XIV and of Turkey and 1683 marked a turning point when the Turks again besieged Vienna SLIDE but were driven back into the Balkans by Prince Eugene of Savoy who reconquered Hungary.

The extinction of the Spanish line of the Habsburgs in 1700 led to a long war of succession, as the result of which the Austrian Habsburgs acquired the Spanish Netherlands (today’s Belgium) and the Spanish possessions in Italy. The male line of the Austrian Habsburgs became extinct with Charles VI in 1740.

Following next are the three ‘Enlightened Despots’ Maria Teresa, Joseph II and Leopold II.

Michael

Introduction to Session 2

Last time, I concluded a brief history of the Habsburgs with mentioning Maria Theresa, SLIDE her oldest son Joseph II, and his

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brother Leopold II. SLIDE All three being important in any history of the Habsburgs as they were collectively known as the ‘Enlightened Despots’ and collectively is how we will talk about them. Before we briefly talk about what ‘enlightened despot’ meant for the Habsburg Empire and I would like to show you this family tree again so you can orientate yourselves to the personalities involved. Slide plus Slide of Marie Antoinette

As ‘Enlightened Despots’ they had absolute power over their widely diversified lands which were still their personal possessions but as a result of the spirit of the time, that is the Enlightenment which French historians traditionally place between 1715 and 1789. Maria Theresa, Joseph and Leopold wished to reform and rationalise. Joseph in particular wished to create a progressive centralized state unfortunately without regard to the ancient traditions which were deeply rooted in the people’s minds. So many of his reforms failed at this time that he died a very disillusioned man. The epitaph on his tomb reads ‘Here lies Joseph II, who failed in all he undertook’. I think he was being a bit hard on himself.

His brother Leopold succeeded him in 1790 and was more cautious than Joseph but still influenced by the spirit of the Enlightenment. On June 4 1789 he had written to his sister, Marie Antoinette ‘that one is happiest when a country has a constitution….The nation is attached to it and….it is much easier to direct it towards its well-being and happiness, which is the only end for which every government is instituted’. Obviously at that time countries with absolute monarchs didn’t have a constitution and a lot of what we are going to hear in the next few sessions is the fight of the peoples of the Empire to get a constitution and even more important keep it.

Leopold welcomed the beginning of the French Revolution which he expected would regenerate France and which would become a model

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which all sovereigns in Europe would have to follow, willingly or unwillingly.

Again, unfortunately, this did not happen and he died suddenly in 1792, some claiming he was poisoned or secretly murdered.

His son Francis II followed him and as we are going to hear he was a man of narrow mind, strictly conservative and without any imagination.SLIDE

Michael

Background to the Congress of Vienna

International events 1792-1814

Situation in Austria 1792-1814

Participants in Congress of Vienna – switching alliances,

differing priorities, secret treaties and agreements…

Main outlines of agreement, signed off BEFORE the Battle of

Waterloo

International events 1792-1814

This is a large subject! The 18th century, known as the Age of

Enlightenment, was nonetheless marked by a number of wars about

territory and disputed claims to a throne, complicated by the ruling

dynasties’ habit of using marriage as a diplomatic tool. The success of

the United States in getting rid of the British king and establishing a

republic, followed by the French Revolution and the establishment of

another republic, this time in Europe, undermined belief in the divine

right of anointed kings. The execution of Louis XVI and his queen,

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Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria and

Emperor Francis, and the sister of both Emperor Joseph and his

short-term successor Leopold, and the aunt of Francis II who acceded

to the title of Holy Roman Emperor in 1792, was a huge shock to all

European monarchs.

The history of Europe in these years is dominated by what was

happening in France where the Reign of Terror under Robespierre

culminated in Robespierre himself being executed. The Directoire

was established, and the French army, the first to be a truly national

army, i.e. not to be made up largely of mercenaries, proved

successful in the field, in Italy in particular. Among the generals to

come to the fore was Napoleon Bonaparte [Powerpoint portrait]. His

success in the field was followed by a political role, initially as First

Consul in a triumvirate of three consuls, and ultimately in 1804 as

self-appointed Emperor of France: the end of the First French

Republic. He continued to expand French territory, appointing

members of his family as heads of state, as well as reorganizing the

administration of France and the countries effectively under French

rule. Peace was made several times with one or more participants in

the shifting alliances made against him: 6 coalitions in all. The

impregnability of his army was called into question when he invaded

Russia, which had previously been an ally, and was forced to retreat

by a lack of supplies, losing a large number of his army; his soldiers

also suffered defeats in Spain in the Peninsular War. Ultimately the

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allied forces defeated him at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, France was

invaded on two fronts, and forced to capitulate. Napoleon abdicated

and was exiled to the island of Elba. The victorious allies then set up

the Congress of Vienna to work out the future frontiers of the various

states.

Situation in Austria 1792-1814

Francis [Powerpoint slide] was the son of the future Emperor Leopold

II (1747–1792) and his wife Maria Luisa of Spain. He was born in 1768

in Florence, the capital of Tuscany, where his father, a son of Maria

Theresa, reigned as Grand Duke from 1765 to 1790. Francis was likely

to become Emperor given that his uncle Joseph had no surviving

children, so the young Archduke was sent to the Imperial Court in

Vienna in 1784 to prepare him for his future role.

On the death of Joseph II in 1790, Francis's father Leopold became

Emperor, but by the winter of 1791 he had become ill, dying on 1

March 1792 at the relatively young age of 44. Francis became

Emperor at the age of 24. He and his second wife – he was married

four times, with less than a year between each marriage! – who was

also his cousin had 12 children, 7 of whom survived into adulthood.

Francis had a suspicious nature, and employed an extensive network

of spies. He was involved in 4 of the 6 coalitions in the wars against

the French, and suffered two severe defeats, firstly at Austerlitz in

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1805, which led him to do away with the title of Holy Roman

Emperor, or to give it its German name “Emperor of the German

peoples”, in 1806. With the advance of Napoleon, it had become

virtually meaningless. He had however named himself “Emperor of

Austria” in 1804, and was King of Hungary, as well as having a string

of other titles. The second major defeat at Wagram in 1809 forced

him to agree to the marriage of his daughter, Maria Luisa, to

Napoleon who had dissolved his marriage to Josephine when it

became evident that their lack of children was due to her age rather

than to Napoleon himself being infertile. On Napoleon’s defeat she

and her son, named the King of Rome and formally recognized as

Napoleon II though he never reigned, returned to Austrian territory.

Participants in the Congress of Vienna – switching alliances, differing

priorities, secret treaties and agreements…

Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain, the four powers that were

chiefly instrumental in the overthrow of Napoleon, had concluded a

special alliance among themselves with the Treaty of Chaumont, on 9

March 1814, a month before Napoleon’s first abdication. The

subsequent treaties of peace with France, signed on 30 May not only

by those four countries but also by Sweden and Portugal and on 20

July by Spain, stipulated that all former belligerents should send

representatives to a congress in Vienna.

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Representatives began to arrive in Vienna towards the end of

September 1814. Metternich, [Powerpoint portrait] principal

minister of Austria, represented his emperor, Francis II. Tsar

Alexander I of Russia [Powerpoint portrait] directed his own

diplomacy. King Frederick William III of Prussia had Karl, prince von

Hardenberg, as his principal minister [Powerpoint portrait]. Great

Britain was represented first by its foreign minister, Viscount

Castlereagh [Powerpoint portrait], then by the Duke of Wellington

[Powerpoint portrait], and by Lord Clancarty after Napoleon’s escape

and the duke’s departure. Louis XVIII of France sent Charles-Maurice

de Talleyrand [Powerpoint portrait]. As signatories to the Treaty of

Paris, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden were also represented. Many of

the rulers of the minor states of Europe also came with their

entourages, and the Congress was famous for its parties.

The four intended to keep the management of affairs in their own

hands, but had to pay at least lip service to a congress they

themselves had convened. They initially agreed to decide the future

of all the conquered territories, then communicate their decisions to

France and Spain. The full congress was to be summoned only when

all was ready.

When Talleyrand arrived he refused to accept the situation and was

supported by Spain’s representative. The opening of the congress

was twice postponed, with negotiations proceeding outside its

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framework. The four discussed the main territorial problems

informally among themselves. The eight signatories to the Paris

peace treaty assumed the formal direction of the congress; a

committee of German states met to draw up a constitution for

Germany, and a special committee on Switzerland was appointed.

Talleyrand was initially excluded from the main work of the congress,

but realising that the four were at odds with one another, he sided

with Britain and Austria against Prussia and Russia until he achieved

the acceptance of Bourbon France as one of the core group.

It was that committee of five that was the real Congress of Vienna.

Between 7 January and 13 February 1815, it settled the frontiers of

all territories north of the Alps and laid the foundations for the

settlement of Italy. The congress never met as a representative body

of the whole of Europe. [Powerpoint of group]

Main outlines of the agreement, signed off BEFORE the Battle of

Waterloo

The major points of contention were the division of Poland and

Saxony, the conflicting claims of Sweden, Denmark, and Russia, and

the adjustment of the borders of the German states. In general,

Russia and Prussia were opposed by Austria, France, and Britain, who

at one point (3 January, 1815) went so far as to conclude a secret

treaty of defensive alliance against the other two. The major final

agreements were as follows [Powerpoint map].

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In return for acquiring Poland, Alexander gave Galicia back to

Austria and gave Thorn and a region around it to Prussia

Kraków was made a free town.

The rest of the Duchy of Warsaw was incorporated as a

separate kingdom under the Russian emperor’s sovereignty.

Prussia got two-fifths of Saxony and was compensated by

extensive additions in Westphalia and on the left bank of the

Rhine. (Castlereagh wanted Prussia to guard the territories of

the Rhine region against France and act as a buttress to the new

Kingdom of the Netherlands, which comprised both the former

United Provinces and Belgium.)

Austria was compensated by Lombardy and Venice and got

back most of Tirol.

Bavaria , Württemberg, and Baden on the whole did well.

Hanover was also enlarged.

The outline of a constitution, a loose confederation, was drawn

up for Germany

Denmark lost Norway to Sweden but got Lauenburg, while

Swedish Pomerania went to Prussia.

Switzerland was given a new constitution.

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In Italy, Piedmont absorbed Genoa; Tuscany and Modena went

to an Austrian archduke; and the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza

was given to Marie-Louise, consort of the deposed Napoleon.

The Papal States were restored to the pope, and Naples went to

the Sicilian Bourbons.

The Final Act of the Congress of Vienna comprised all the agreements

in one great instrument. It was signed on 9 June, 1815, a few days

BEFORE the Battle of Waterloo. The political boundaries laid down by

the Congress of Vienna lasted, with a few exceptions, for more than

40 years. The statesmen had successfully worked out the principle of

a balance of power. However, the idea of nationality had been almost

entirely ignored and territories had been bartered without much

reference to the wishes of their inhabitants.

Judith

THE CONCERT OF EUROPE

The French Revolution of 1789 had spurred a great fear among the leading powers in Europe of the lower classes violently rising against the Old powers.

As Judith has stated, the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the consolidation, “of the intimate relations now uniting the four sovereigns for the welfare of the world.” and in more practical ways to solve the pressing issues (mainly suppressing revolutions against monarchs). For the sake of clarity, I shall refer to the participating Nations as the Alliance.

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The leading personalities of the Alliance were British foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh, Austrian Chancellor Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and Alexander I the Tsar of Russia

OBJECTIVESThe Alliance’s first primary objectives were to

Contain France after decades of war Achieve a balance of power between the Alliance Nations Uphold the territorial arrangements made at the Congress of

Vienna and in doing so Prevent the rise of another Napoleon-esque figure which

would result in another continent wide war

The Alliance agreed to hold periodical meetings. Those meetings were to be “devoted to the grand interests they have in common, and to the discussion of measures which shall be judged to be most salutary for the repose and prosperity of the nations and for the maintenance of peace of Europe.”

It was in this way that the title or concept of the Concert of Europe was engendered – that is to plan solutions of mutual problems and create policies to consolidate the overall objectives of the Alliance (hence by definition to work in concert – jointly, in co-operation).

This system of diplomacy by Congress and conferences in concert was one of the most interesting experiments of 19th century. The period that followed the Quadruple Alliance in 1815 is known as the Era of Congresses. On many occasions, the members of the European Concert met at different places to discuss questions that needed collective deliberations.

There were 26 major meetings of both Congresses and formal Conferences, widely recognized as part of the Concert of Europe system over the period of its existence. Congresses being those meetings attended by heads of state or their principal foreign

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minister. The formal Conferences, being those attended by the designated ambassadors to the country hosting the meeting.Among the meetings of the Alliance were the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), of Aix-la-Chappelle (1818), Carlsbad (1819), Verona (1822), and London in 1830, 1832, and 1838-1839.

At these Congresses, the dominating personality was the Austrian Chancellor, Metternich Under his leadership and guidance, the Alliance practically established a dictatorship of the Powers.

The Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818 marked the zenith of the system by which the Allied Powers endeavoured to establish a joint control over the affairs of all continental States. The Congress was recognized as the Supreme Council of Europe and accordingly it entertained appeals in all kinds of cases.

ACHIEVEMENTSThe Concert's principle accomplishment was the securing of independence for Greece (1830) and Belgium (1831). In 1840, the powers (except France) intervened in defense of the Ottoman Empire (against which they had supported Greece) to end Egypt's eight-year occupation of Syria.

DEMISE OF THE CONCERTIn spite of these achievements certain differences arose among the Allied Powers and those differences increased with the passage of time. Such differences were due to the divergent interests and mutual jealousy of the Allied Powers.

As a consequence, The Concert of Europe now lacking a unity of purpose broke up in 1823, subsequent to the conferences at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, at Troppau in 1820, at Laibach in 1821, and at Verona in 1822.

It has been stated that the break down came from the outcome of the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818). For the first time Great Britain became aware of the real intentions of those who had set up the Concert of Europe. It was at this Congress, Czar Alexander proposed

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that a declaration should be signed by all the Allied Powers guaranteeing the existing territorial boundaries and also the rights of sovereign princes

This Congress was followed by the Protocol of Troppau (1820) which proposed and agreed to the intervention of one State in the internal affairs of other States. As this proposal was in accordance with the views of Metternich, it was accepted by Austria. Prussia also followed suit.

However the credit for the overall failure of the Alliance or the Concert of Europe must go to Great Britain, who opposed tooth and nail the decisions of Russia, Austria and Prussia at the Congress of Aix-la-Chappelle and at the subsequent Protocol of Troppau.

The question was whether the Powers had any right to intervene in the internal affairs of a State merely on the ground that the status quo had been upset in a particular country. As Judith has said the idea of nationality had been almost entirely ignored and territories had been bartered without much reference to the wishes of their inhabitants

Whatever the ostensible object of the Concert of Europe, its real intent was to control the external and internal affairs of the European States. Great Britain was opposed to such a policy and counteracted this intent of the other Allied Powers. The British stand was that she was not prepared to accept the general principle of international control. However, she was prepared to consider separately the question of intervention whenever an emergency arose in any country.

Great Britain rejected the idea that the collective force of the Allies was “to be prostituted to support the established order without any consideration of the extent to which it was abused.”

According to Castlereagh, “The Alliance was never intended as a union for the governments of the world, or for the superintendence of the internal affairs of other States.” His view was that the Concert’s

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purpose was not to suppress revolutionary movements in every nook and comer of Europe irrespective of their merits, and that a universal guarantee of the status quo would have resulted in the systematic suppression of nationalism, liberalism and constitutionalism in Europe.

Great Britain refused to be a party to the Troppau Protocol. Castlereagh objected. His contention was that the Protocol was bound to be considered as a league of sovereigns against their subjects and there was every possibility of the revolutionary tendencies getting an impetus on account of it.

Commentators have considered it beneficial that the Concert of Europe collapsed. Had the Concert continued, the nationalist and liberal forces in Europe would have got a severe setback. It has been further propounded that Great Britain rendered a great service to the cause of nationalism and constitutionalism by first protesting and later leaving the Concert.

For example, there would have been no unification of Italy and Germany. It would have been impossible to separate Belgium from Holland in spite of the grievances of the former. Norway and Sweden would have continued to remain united. Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria and Serbia would have not have got their independence. Poland would have remained under foreign yoke for an indefinite period. Peace would have been secured in Europe at the price of liberty and independence.

Perhaps the strongest causes for the Concert’s demise focus on two mid-century events: The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, People's Spring, Springtime of the Peoples, or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848 and the Crimean War of 1853–1856, about which we will hear later in this course.

Because of such events, the Concert was no longer shielded from domestic politics. It became much more difficult for elites to justify to

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their people their continued cooperation with odious foreign regimes at the expense of seemingly more-immediate national interests.

However, despite the overall failure of the Congress System it marked an important step in European and World diplomacy. In its approximately 85 year life, it had erected an imposing structure of international law, and as we shall hear from Michael perhaps aided in the evolution of the later new European institutions in attempting to seek collaboration between European Governments.

As a matter of interest, Henry Kissinger's Harvard University PhD 1954 was about the Concert of Europe. In his subsequent 1957 book based on that dissertation, A World Restored, the future United States Secretary based proposals for a "stable international order" on his study of the Concert of Europe.

Fenwick

NATIONALITIES AND THE HABSBURGS

The Habsburgs’greatest achievement in Central Europe

was to take over the historic kingdoms of Bohemia and

Hungary. The first involved crushing a bid for independence

by the Bohemians at the start of the Thirty Years’ War , in

1620, and a reconstruction of the kingdom. Making good the

claim to Hungary required a protracted reconquest of most

of the country which had been occupied by the Ottoman Turks.

This was completed around 1700. Securing the reconquest

Involved crushing a series of Hungarian bids for independence.

As well as war and conquest this eastwards expansion involved

major movements of Slav peoples from the Balkans to resettle

Hungary .

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The next step , in this age of enlightened absolutism , was

to strengthen and enrich the dynasty by centralising control

of the accumulated territories of the Empire. This brought

the Habsburgs into confrontation with the historic identities

of these territories , above all Bohemia and Hungary , which

were embodied in representative institutions and collective

privileges of the historic ruling classes.

Towards the end of the 18th century resistance to centralisation

was reinforced by a new understanding of national identity.

This had developed in the German states beyond the Empire

as part of a cultural renewal in reaction to the dominance of

France established by Louis XIV. The idea was to strengthen

the nation’s cultural identity by exploring the richness of its language and traditions. The concept soon took on a political dimension - of political as well as cultural renewal.

These ideas were quickly taken up within the Empire. There the

Germans were the dominant nationality in the Imperial court

and bureaucracy, and so it was the historic nations of Bohemia and Hungary , in resistance to German-led imperial centralisation ,

who began to assert their own ethnicities - language, literature

and tradition . This gave a broader base to the resistance ,

extending beyond the historic elites to a literate public.

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Soon , in a kind of chain reaction , other peoples in the Empire

began to define their own national identities . First were the

Croats - in reaction not to the Habsburgs but the Hungarians .

Medieval Croatia had been for a while an independent kingdom

before coming under the Hungarian crown. After recovering

Hungary from the Turks the Habsburgs developed a military frontier

In which Croatia was the linchpin. Next to the Croats were Serbs who had moved from the Ottoman Balkans . These two nationalities

both feared Hungarian domination and found a common Slav heritage .

How did the Habsburgs respond to all this? In part, positively:

by acknowledging ethnic diversity , for instance in public

ceremonies and festivals , and recognising vernacular languages

and encouraging basic literacy ; by providing the practical benefits

of good government , constructive reform and improvement of

material conditions ; and by trying to develop ideas of Imperial

patriotism and citizenship - not just the traditional paternalism of the Emperor but active loyalty to the Empire.

Less positive , sometimes destructive , responses were the tactics

of divide and rule : playing off nationalities and holding the

threat of peasant insurrection against landowning elites .

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Onto this scene burst the French Revolution which created a new concept of national identity embodied in the nation state , fusing

nation and liberty. French armies advanced as the liberators of

other nationalities . Soon they were supporting a new hegemony -

Napoleon’s empire , yet Napoleon - the most enlightened of all

despots - was an inspiration to reforming liberals even while they

hated French domination of their nation.

After Napoleon’s defeat what was the way forward? The revolutionary concept of the nation state was too radical for

for the elites of the historic nations in the Empire , but they

accepted that national and political renewal went together

and believed that this could be achieved within the historic

framework of the Empire.

How would the Habsburgs respond? The monarchy of the Metternich era was haunted by the disastrous failures of Joseph II’s progressive

reforms and the spectre of Revolution. It was burdened by the

costs of the wars against France and by the rewards of victory -

the enlarged territories in Italy which were to prove the soft

underbelly of the Empire . So leadership and capacity for constructive reform were lacking and the primary response was

repression of liberal/national ideas , which proved ineffectual except in heightening discontent.

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As in the German states after 1815 , public discussion developed

about how to carry forward the constructive reforms and material

improvements needed by a rapidly changing society , which was

shaped largely by national and liberal ideas.In these years

political consciousness widened not only among the ‘historic’

nationalities but among the ‘submerged’ nationalities - Slav

peoples , primarily peasant populations , such as the Slovaks,

Ruthenians and Romanians .

In 1848 , in the Habsburg Empire as throughout Europe , the overthrow of the French monarchy was the signal for demonstrations

and uprisings in an upsurge of national and liberal aspirations.

A failure of nerve at the top of the directionless government in

Vienna followed by the collapse of Imperial authority opened a

space in which leaders of the nationalities might have come together to work out a way forward. In reality, that was impossible

in the face of the complexity of the issues , the pressure of events

and the gathering forces of the Imperial counter-revolution.

Briefly, Germans and Czechs split , the Germans reaching out to their compatriots in the German states and the Czechs to their

fellow Slavs in the Empire. The Magyar leadership pushed forward

with self rule and alarmed the Slav nationalities in Hungary.

Underlying these conflicts was the fundamental issue : how

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were national identities to be defined and given political expression in the Empire ; how to reconcile the historical/territorial element

of nationality and the element of language and ethnicity.

But now came the counter-revolution . The new Emperor

Franz Joseph and a coterie of reactionary politicians and veteran generals brutally subdued Vienna and Prague and reconquered

Hungary in a war to the death, with the help of the Slav nationalities and the Russian Empire.

Then came neo-absolutism , a reversion to Joseph II’s German-led

bureaucratic centralisation and reform .Its greatest achievement was to carry through the abolition of serfdom in the Empire that

Joseph had attempted and the 1848 revolutions had promised. This

removed an explosive issue from nationality politics as well as an

immense block to economic and social modernisation .

In 1861 neo-absolutism was brought to an end ; there had been

revived resistance from the nationalities and there was the need to find ways of paying the costs of war in Italy. Constitutional government was restored and politics resumed . Prolonged negotiations with leaderships of the nationalities began.

The monarchy started to devolve powers to the provinces in the

historic crown lands while retaining some political control from Vienna. However , the Emperor eventually had to concede to the

Hungarians virtual control of their kingdom , in the Compromise

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of 1867 .Defeated by Bismarck’s Prussia and excluded from Germany

the Emperor had no choice if he was to preserve the status

of the dynasty . On their side the Hungarians had held back from claiming full independence being now fully aware of how other nationalities in Hungary would react.

Germans and Hungarians dominated this new Dual Monarchy, but

other nationalities were given some guarantees and the possibility

of further autonomy was opened up for them. Politicking and bargaining continued while the Empire’s rulers endeavoured, in

the immortal words of one prime minister, ’ to keep all the nationalities of the monarchy in a condition of even and well modulated dissent ’.

Could this precarious balance have survived the intensifying

tensions of modernisation and their nationalistic expression

in mass politics ? Perhaps not but what actually happened

was the impact of the Great War on the populations of the Empire.

The material deprivations and suffering aggravated by harsh

government led to a breakdown of authority and the collapse

of the Empire‘s legitimacy. The nationalities now looked to the

victorious Allies to give them the security of their own homelands

but it soon became clear that these new nation states were

to experience the same contradictions as had troubled the Habsburgs. Among the intermingled peoples of Central Europe

there could be no perfect match between territory and ethnicity;

each nation state was in effect a ‘little empire’ containing

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diverse and discontented populations.

Peter

NATIONALITIES: THE CZECHS

1. Background Czechs are ancient Slav inhabitants of the Bohemian lands,

but other racial groups also present there , particularly Germans , Jews and Slovaks

Bohemia not part of the Danube basin: rivers flow north to the Elbe and North Sea, or Oder and Baltic Sea. Moravia is part of Danube basin. Trade and migration tend to follow rivers

Prague founded around 885 : always the centre of the Czech lands

St Wencelas , patron saint of Bohemia, martyred in 935 Otakar II of Bohemia vied unsuccessfully with the early

Habsburgs to be elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in mid-c13

Charles IV , “Father of the Nation” and King of Bohemia 1346 -1378 , made Prague the capital of the Holy Roman Empire after his election to Emperor of the HRE , and established university there: a golden era

Hussite revolution against moral decline of the Church of Rome ( The First reformation) Huss martyred in 1415 and Hussites finally defeated in 1434

In 1526, Archduke Ferdinand I became King of Bohemia and integrated it into the Habsburg empire

Prague regained its cultural pre-eminence under Rudolf II (1576-1611) , based on Czech language and Protestant faith

Thirty Years War 1618-48 Bohemians defeated by Catholic/Habsburg forces in 1620

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After 1620, its national identity, language and faith were suppressed within the Habsburg Empire by an “alien” nobility, Catholic faith and German Habsburg culture

Some “alien” nobility adopted Czech culture and championed language, folklore, customs and history. This helped later nationalist revival.

However, the “common people” were seen as the core of Czech culture , with a German middle class in the cities and on the Bohemian fringe ( Sudetenland), especially in government service and the professions

Economic stagnation in c17 and c18. Further integration into the Habsburg Empire

2. National sentiment After two centuries of suppression , national sentiment

began to grow again in late 18th and early 19th century; language and cultural revival and search for national identity

Modernisation began after 1800 with development of towns, mining and industry, but economic dislocation for many

Romantic movement fed Czech nationalism

3. Politics How to channel national sentiment?

Limited autonomy as a Czech speaking territory Territorial sub-state within Habsburg Empire

( like Hungary) A share in running the Austro-Hungarian

empire A fully independent national state

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The 1848-1849 revolution was part of wider unrest also affecting France , Germany and all the Habsburg lands as the post-Napoleonic settlement of 1815 broke down

Since 1815, Austria –under Metternich’s stewardship – had become even more conservative and repressive. As well as nationalist sentiment, points of contention included:

Land rights Taxation Religious rights Military conscription Enduring feudal structures for many rural dwellers Freedom of the press Freedom of association Centralisation of power in Vienna and stagnation in

the provinces

Unrest spread to Prague in June 1848. Dissent became politicised. Pan -Slavic Congress. Frictions between German and Czech nationalist visions, although both had some liberal aims. Street fighting and suppression by Habsburg forces. Bohemian diet dissolved.

Modernisation in second half of c.19 - industrialisation , railways and urban growth (Prague population - 300,000 by 1880)

Different forms of Czech nationalism developed in second half of c19 , eventually crystallising around the “Mazyryk Model” of an independent , democratic nation state with a “western” orientation, which arrived after WW1

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4. Impact on the Habsburg Empire

Never quite “digested” by the Habsburgs:- a cohesive ethnic group with distinctive language , history ,culture and faith

Significant German presence , and trade routes down the Elbe ( rather than Danube) , meant that the Czech/German relationship was arguably as important as the Czech/Austrian relationship

Prague was always one of the Empire’s leading cities and cultural centres

Czech nationalism simmered throughout Habsburg rule and led to many frictions and outright revolt in 1848

SOME POINTS FOR DISCUSSION

A. What does the Czechs’ story tell us about the way the Habsburgs sought to extend, consolidate and maintain their multi-ethnic Empire?

B. Was the Czechs’ experience of Empire similar, or different, to other “small nations”?

C. Did the Czechs gain anything from their long incorporation into the Empire?

Lindsay

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U3A: THE HABSBURG EMPIRE NATIONALITIES: THE HUNGARIANS

896 ce/ad -1000Magyars and other linked tribes arrived from the Ural Mountains and settled in the Carpathian basin. Possible origins in Siberia. Settlement meant extensive mingling of gene pools with peoples already in the area. Their language is Finno-Ugric (non Indo-European) as also Estonians and Finns.They were “pagan” but made a conscious decision to embrace the catholic religion and form a kingdom which could seek alliances. They converted from a society based on kinship and, in 1000 ce, appointed King Stephen I. He became Saint Stephen after his death and references thereafter to the “lands of Saint Stephen” probably connote a god-given right.

1000-1500. Conflicts with Mongol Horde (a devastating invasion in 1241), Ottomans, Serbian Empire. Union briefly with Poland in 1300s. Constitutional monarchy, with the “Golden Bull” of 1222 giving similar rights to Nobility to challenge the monarch as Magna Carta. Hungary maintained its status as a regional power.

1526Battle of Mohacs. Ottomans defeated Hungary and occupied 2/3 of their land for 170 years, including Transylvania. By agreement with the Habsburgs, on the death of the Hungarian King, Ferdinand I (the

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Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria), was elected King after the defeat.The Hungarian population stagnated after Mohacs and inward settlement of Slavs, Romanians and Germans transformed the Kingdom; by 1700, Hungarians were 40% of the population.

1699After the failed Ottoman siege of Austria in 1683, the Habsburgs went on the offensive and retrieved Hungarian lands - ratified by the 1699 Peace of Karlowitz.

1703-11The new Habsburg administration from 1699 was not always welcomed by Hungarians, particularly the nobility. An 8-year war was instigated by Francis Rakoczi II in 1703 and, although it failed in its aim of independence, a compromise agreement restored the ancient Hungarian constitution and integrated Hungary as an autonomous unit under the Habsburg monarchy.

Mid 1700s - 1790sMaria Theresa and Josef II (“enlightened despots”) introduced improved agrarian methods and administration. Josef tried to make German the official language and to introduce vernacular languages in schools. 7 major language groups (nations) within Hungary. Latin had been used as a Lingua Franca in the legislature together with Hungarian and neither the Croats nor the Hungarians wanted the

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dominant language to be German. Josef’s successor, Leopold II re-confirmed the dominance of Hungarian.

1820-1840sWidespread improvement in education, and social emancipation, including greater recognition of vernacular culture, although the Hungarians tended to think that improving individual rights would negate the need for community/national rights.In the 1830s and 1840s ideas of nationalism were growing in Europe, often the need to be free from over-arching authority, with greater autonomy of language and culture, although some, eg the Poles and the Croats, who had previously had their own nation, sometimes harboured greater aims. Istvan Szechenyi tried grad-alist reform in Hungary but his proposals were vetoed by the Emperor in 1832.Crop failures (particularly the potato) in Europe in 1846, together with the dominance of British industry adversely affecting others’, and improvements in communications, led to migration to towns and a volatile environment.

1847-49In 1847, Lajos Kossuth and Ferenc Deak in the Hungarian diet sought greater autonomy. Some success with abolition of customs barriers but wanted more. Kossuth demanded self-rule under a reformed Habsburg monarchy. There were riots. Kossuth, Szechenyi and Bathanyi met with Ferdinand who agreed to an autonomous Hungarian government. Kossuth pressed for further demands, eg evacuation of all non-Hungarian troops. Ferdinand agreed to an

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autonomous constitutional monarchy with the Habsburg Emperor as overall monarch.These events roused liberals elsewhere, the Vienna royal residence was marched on, the arsenal looted, and Ferdinand fled in 1848. It is worth noting that Ferdinand was in weak health, having a lifelong condition which caused regular epileptic fits.

Romanians in Transylvania rose in a peasants revolt (a “Jacquerie”), on the advice of the local Austrian military advisor, and began killing landlords. This was put down with much loss of life. Slovaks demanded official use of their language, which was refused by the Magyars. Serbs in Vojdovina proclaimed autonomy and were crushed. 5,000, mainly Croats, under Count Jelacic entered Hungary to support the Serbs and were repulsed. The Palatine (Governor) resigned, leaving Kossuth in power, and his proposed replacement was killed by the Hungarians.

In October 1848 Ferdinand gave full military powers to Prince Alfred Windischgratz to restore order, which he did. Windischgratz also persuaded Ferdinand to abdicate in favour of his 18 year old nephew, Franz Josef.

In April 1849 Lajos Kossuth declared complete independence and had recruited an army (mainly conscripts) of 170,000.

Franz Josef sought help from the Tsar, possibly calling in the agreement to mutual help made at the Congress of Vienna 1814/15,

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but the Tsar would have not welcomed a strong Hungary with Poles in top military positions.Russia fielded 200,000 troops, and there were 48,000 Romanians, who joined on their march through Transylvania, 83,000 Austrians and 44,000 under Jelacic.August 1849, Hungarians surrendered - to the Russians not the Habsburgs.

1867 - 1918The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was formed by the Ausgleich (Compromise) of 28 April 1867, following Austria’s defeat by Prussia at Sadowa and her expulsion from the now defunct German Confederation. Hungary was given the “Lands of Saint Stephen”, which included Romanians, Serbs, Slovaks and Ruthenians, and Austria its hereditary lands, plus Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia. This was arguably a compromise forged between the elites of the two strongest groups in the Habsburg monarchy. Magyar supremacy was based on historical and political achievement not statistical majority. A census of everyday languages spoken in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1911, showed Hungarian spoken by 54%. But, the census allowed one choice only and it is understandable for multi-linguists to state the dominant language of government. Jews, 5% of the population, were counted as Hungarian speakers. I have seen no reference to Romanies.The Dual Monarchy survived until 1918; and the Peace Treaty of Trianon in 1920 made major changes affecting the country of

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Hungary thereafter, creating new nations (some with Hungarian minorities) out of former Hungarian lands.

Chris - February 2019

SESSION 3: Revolution, Music and Nationality, Visual Arts and Power

Introduction to Session 3

At our last session we considered Austria’s relationship with revolutionary France, the Congress of Vienna, the Concert of Europe, Klemens von Metternich, the Nationalities of the Empire, in particular the Slavs of Bohemia and the Magyars of Hungary.

Today we are considering the social history of the Habsburg Empire in both music and visual art. But before we do I would like to talk about the biggest mid-point crisis of the 19th century in Europe, the revolutions around 1848. Around 1848 , because in 1830 there was a revolutionary wave of romantic nationalism in Belgium, in France, in Poland, in Switzerland and in Italy. These resulted in popular, constitutional monarchies, in France, known as the July Monarchy, and in Belgium.

In Italy the Duke of Modena, Francis IV, grandson of Maria Theresa SLIDE hoped to become King of Northern Italy by increasing his territory at the expense of the revolutionaries. These revolutionaries wished to unite Italy replacing the papal flag with the tricolore. The Pope asked Austria to help and in 1831 the Austrian army marched across the whole of Italy suppressing the fledgling revolutionary

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movement, particularly in Modena. It is significant that throughout its history Austria had wars with Italian states as this SLIDE shows 8 or 9 battles in only one year. These battles and future wars with Italy only served to weaken Austria for no gain.

In February 1848 the French July Monarchy was overthrown and the Second Republic proclaimed. What happened next in central Europe showed the extent of the underlying unrest under absolutism. The year started in hope for the people of Europe but ended in chaos and disappointment. The situation was particularly complex in the Habsburg monarchy. But the complexity was not the cause of failure. In both Germany and Italy the problem of political national unification under a regime of constitutional liberty was far less complex yet by 1849 the solutions had failed here too.

Why couldn’t Austria achieve both national political unification with constitutional liberty?

Firstly, there were several nationalities SLIDE each striving for unity and liberty and they all acted at cross purposes. Secondly ,this was further complicated by both the German and Italian speakers within the Habsburg Monarchy participating in the general national movements of their fellow nationals outside of the Habsburg Empire.

Thirdly and perhaps most important was that the two trends of the revolution were also in conflict with one another. There was the liberal trend which stressed the introduction of modern constitutions securing the rights and freedom of the individual against authority and the nationalistic trend which wished to strengthen the authority of the national collectively which meant in most cases at the expense of other nationalities. In the conflict we are considering national aspirations took precedence over human liberty.This might sound familiar?

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So it was that the struggle amongst the various nationalities themselves doomed the 1848 revolution and gave the Habsburgs the opportunity of re-establishing their absolutist rule. As we know these nationalistic conflicts lasted after 1918 and it could be said that after 1933 they gave totalitarian Germany and then after 1945 totalitarian Russia the opportunity for imposing their control of, and ideology on, central Europe. Closer to our time these nationalistic conflicts also led to the peaceful breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993 and the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia in 1992.

Revolutionary events in Austria occurred in 5 separate but interconnected developments: amongst the Germans centred on Vienna, the Czechs centred on Prague, the Magyars centred on Budapest, the Croatians centred on Zagreb known as Agram, and amongst the Italians centred on Milan and Venice. The first thing to happen was that Metternich was forced to resign by student protests. Two days later the Habsburg Court promised the introduction of a constitution. Next Germans and Italians rose up. The Hungarian Diet which had been meeting in Pressburg (Bratislavia) since 1847 demanded an extension of Hungary’s home rule. The spokesmen for the German national movement met in Heidelberg on March 6 to prepare a convocation of an elected German parliament in Frankfurt am Main for all the German speaking lands.

The Czech national leader Frantiŝek Palacký was invited to speak at this convocation as Bohemia formed part of the German Confederation. The German Confederation was a weak successor to the Holy Roman Empire dissolved in 1806. His speech for the first time defined the Czech national point of view and assigned to the continuation of the Habsburg monarchy the important task of Austria forming a bulwark against the conquest of central eastern Europe by

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Russian or German expansionism. Austria was to provide a protective shield over the various central European nationalities whilst allowing free and equal national development. When this perceived need for Austria had obviously failed by the beginning of world war one the Austrian Empire simply became redundant.

In the five days from March 18 to March 22 a popular uprising freed Milan from Austrian occupation followed by Venice. The Piedmontese army came to help the insurrectionists but was defeated at Custoza by the Austrian army under General Radetzky. Round one of the revolutionary war was a victory for the Habsburgs.

In Prague, the Austrians faced, not a national army, but students at improvised barricades . A congress of Austrian Slavs was also being held in the Bohemian capital chaired by Frantiŝek Palacký. These moderate liberals wished only to preserve and strengthen the Habsburg monarchy whilst reforming it. The re-establishment of order by Prince Windischgrätz’s army in Prague was welcomed in Vienna by Viennese democrats because of the antagonism of both the radical and the reactionary Germans to Czech and Slav nationalist aspirations.

Little did the German democrats know that only four month’s later the same Prince Windischgrätz would violently put down a popular uprising of the Germans in Vienna, thus becoming the most hated aristocrat of old Austria.

Under pressure, the Austrian court proclaimed a constitution and a parliamentary assembly called Reichstag met in July in Vienna. The most important and one lasting achievement of the revolutions of 1848 was the complete emancipation of the Austrian peasants. Though the peasants were the only class to benefit from the revolution they nowhere actively participated in it and remained unshaken in their loyalty to the dynasty.

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When October uprisings took place the court escaped to Olmütz in Moravia and the parliament met in the nearby town of Kremsier. There the constitution was debated and adopted by Parliament March 7 1849. SLIDE The Empire was to be reorganised on the basis of the autonomy of its various parts and the equality of its various nationalities.

The Reichstag was to consist of two chambers, the lower representing the people and the upper one the various lands. This was similar to the constitution of the United States and one which the federal states of Switzerland had adopted the year before.

This Kremsier constitution was the only instance in modern Austrian history in which all the various nationalities through their representatives arrived at an agreed-upon solution to the difficult problems of how to reconcile the unity of the Empire with the rights and freedoms of its component parts.

Well I think you will agree this all sounds perfect. Unfortunately for Austria and perhaps the world, the Kremsier constitution was not accepted by the court because Radesky’s and Windischgrätz’s military victories had restored the court’s confidence. In November Windischgrätz’s brother –in-law Prince Felix Schwartzenberg had become prime minster. This proud aristocrat was dedicated to the restoration of the grandeur of the Habsburg monarchy and its leading position in Germany and Italy. He could easily influence Franz the 18 year old who became Emperor on December 2 1848 SLIDE on the abdication of his feeble minded uncle Ferdinand. Franz added the name of his great-great-uncle the famous enlightened reformer Joseph to his own name becoming Franz-Joseph I who was to reign for 68 years.

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Although the manifesto SLIDE published on Franz-Joseph’s accession promised constitutional liberalism the new government influenced by Schwartzenberg had no intention of carrying it out.

But before being able to re-establish absolutism Austria’s authority had to regained in Hungary, Italy and Germany.

Nationalistic Magyar Hungary declared independence from Austria and resisted the Austrian army led by two Polish generals. Ultimately Russia intervened on Austria’s behalf and Hungary was subdued with 14 Hungarian generals being executed at Arad.

In Italy the Habsburgs restored their rule in Lombardy and Venetia, the Pope returned to Rome.

In Germany, the German National Assembly offered the crown of a new German Empire to the King of Prussia, which he rejected out of hostility to any democratic or popular movement. The German liberals were bloodily suppressed. The Germans tried to reform the German Confederation at a conference in Olmütz. The German Confederation was still lead by Austria. Under pressure from the Russians the Germans had to accept continuing Austrian leadership. This brake to the rise of Prussia become known as the Punctuation of Olmütz.

So it looked that by the end of 1850 under the vigorous leadership of Schwarzenberg that Austria had emerged from revolution strengthened and absolute. This corresponded to events in revolutionary France , where in 1851 Louis Napoleon became military dictator by coup d’état and the following year Emperor of France.

Back in Austria the constitution that had been granted but never implemented in 1849 was suspended. A strictly centralised and absolutist regime was established using modern and efficient methods. Schwarzenberg suddenly died and was succeeded as head

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of government by Alexander Baron Bach who implemented a system of reformed neo-absolutism with a secret police force. This was called the Bach system. It is said that the pillars of the Bach system were four armies: ‘ a standing army of soldiers, a sitting army of office holders, a kneeling army of priests and a fawning army of sneaks’. German was introduced as the unifying language of administration and ancient privileges and autonomies abolished.

Thus in conclusion although the Empire was unified in language, and the non-German nationalities were not suppressed the people of central Europe who had hoped for constitutional liberty as an indispensable element of modern times were disappointed.

The only relatively satisfied class was the peasants who kept the freedoms achieved in 1848. Michael

Smetena

Bedrik Smetana, born in Bohemia which was a part of Czechoslovakia, pioneered the development of a musical style that became closely identified with his country's aspirations to independent statehood, and he can be named as the father of Czech music. He is best known internationally for his opera “The Bartered Bride” and Ma Vlast (My Country) his symphonic poem.

However, well before the influence of Smetana's compositions, music held a central place in the culture of the ancient kingdom of Bohemia. Towards the end of the 18th century, Bohemia was described as the “conservatory of Europe” because of the immense musical activity in all sections of the community, especially remarkable in the outlying country districts. Before this the religious

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rebellions of the reforming Hussites in the 15th century opposed the use of elaborate liturgical music in worship, encouraged congregational hymn singing using the Bohemian language and melodies of popular songs in these hymns. The influence of these Hussite hymns was deep, long lasting and extensive. Although in the early 17th century Bohemia was part of the Habsburg Empire

after the battle of White Mountain in 1620, it was allowed some religious tolerance under Emperor Rudolf 11. His successor crushed this which led to Bohemian rebellions. These were defeated and the country became firmly under the grip of the Habsburgs until the 19th century and the ensuing Euopean search for political change. The ground was already prepared for a national composer of wide gifts such as Bedrik Smetana.

Smetana was born in Bohemia east of Prague in 1824 to a middle class family. As was the custom in such a family, German was the language spoken, but Bedrik was determined to master the Czech language which he did. This was the language of the lower and peasant classes. His father was musical as was young Smetana and the boy gave a piano recital at the age of six. He learnt to play the violin and began composing. He was determined to make his career in music much against his father's wishes. While studying Bedrick made friends with the poet Karel Havlicek, the future Czech revolutionary. Both friends moved to Prague where Bedrik Smetana got to know leading figures in the Czech national revival. Round about 1848 at the age of 23/24, Smetana became a member of the pro-democracy movement in Prague led by his old friend Karel Havlicek. This movement was urging an end to Habsburg absolute rule and for more political autonomy. It was the time of a climate of political change and upheaval that was seeping through Europe. A

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Citizen's Army was formed and Smetana wrote a series of patriotic works including two marches dedicated to the pro-democracy movement. In June 1848 as the Habsburg armies moved to suppress rebellious tendencies, Prague came under attack from the Austrian forces. Barricades were erected and Smetana took part in defending the one on the Charles Bridge. The nascent uprising was quickly crushed but Smetana avoided the imprisonment or exile received by the leaders of the Citizen's Army.

However, he continued to associate himself with progressive and nationalist ideas held by the Czech international elite of that time which the repression after the 1848 uprising did not discourage. He founded a music school in Prague in that year but 8 years later at the age of 30 he left for Sweden because of the absolutism of the Austrian governor Baron Alexander von Bach. With a more liberal atmosphere in Prague, Smetana returned and in 1862 a Czech national theatre for opera, ballet and plays was inaugurated. He set himself the task of composing a repertoire of Czech operas. He had great success with his historic opera “The Brandenburgers in Bohemia” although this success was superseded by that of the “Bartered Bride” in 1866. This date marks the birth of a truly national Czech school of music. Now almost a national figurehead, Smetana sang of the glorious legendary past of Bohemia and produced many examples of national opera at its finest. His 8 operas are all still performed in Czech theatres. A friend of mine attended one not long ago in Prague and suddenly to his amazement the whole Czech audience left to its feet and joined in the singing of a particular song.

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It was during 1874-79 that Smetana, now profoundly deaf, bequeathed to Czech music his great cycle of symphonic poems Ma Vlast (My Country), six masterpieces which successively sing of Bohmia's legendary past and beautiful countryside. I have chosen to tell of the most famous – the Vlatava, the Czech name for the Moldau – the river which flows through Prague.

The composition describes the course of the Vlatava starting as two small springs on the German Czech border, and the music describes them trickling over pebbles.

The two streams form one river and the music shows the grandeur of the bigger river.

The river courses through mountains, woods and meadows. And at one point shows a forest hunt by means of horns and trumpets.

Then it flows through a small town with a peasant wedding expressed by a bouncy tune from the strings.

Next is a dreamlike section where water nymphs glide through the water in the moonlight.

It passes looming rocks, proud with castles, palaces and ruins aloft.

The Vlatava swirls into the St. John's Rapids – shown by clashing of symbols and drums.

Then it widen and flows through Prague, past the Vysehrad Castle, then majestically vanishes into the distance and finally joins the Elbe river.

Janice

The Strauss Family

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We have just heard about some of the great composers of the wider

Hapsburg Empire, but to me nothing epitomises Vienna in the 19th

Century as much as the music of the Strauss family. While the other

composers we have heard about are often called ‘great’ very few

people would consider the music of the Strauss family as ‘great’;

‘popular’ yes, and for many of us it conjures up a picture of life in

Vienna during the latter days of the Empire, of beautifully dressed

people whirling around ballrooms to the strains of a Viennese Waltz.

I suspect that many of you, like me, were brought up listening to or

watching the New Year’s Day concert from Vienna with a well-

dressed, well-behaved audience in the beautiful Musikverein and

punctuated by dancers performing in some of the most gorgeously

appointed palaces such as the Belvedere and Schönbrunn. This

romantic notion of Vienna has remained with us but how accurately

does it reflect the Vienna of the 19th Century or is it just a mirage?

The Strauss dynasty was founded by Johann Strauss I, he was born in

1804 and died in 1849. He developed the waltz dance form of music

together with a composer called Josef Lanner 1801-1843 and then

this form was further developed by his son, Johann II. Dance halls

became popular all over Europe in the 19th Century and the Viennese

Waltz may have originated in a folk dance called the Landler. Many

of the classical composers of the time included Landler in their

compositions and Josef 1 was composing at the same time as

Brahms, Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss (no relation).

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During the Baroque period Slavic and Hungarian forms influenced

Austrian music and the Strauss family wrote many polkas and

marches as well as waltzes.

The Viennese waltz is the earliest form of our current ballroom

dances and it was the first dance that required the dancers’ bodies to

be close together, something which scandalised many and which

attracted a great deal of criticism. The waltz form spread quickly and

it first arrived in England in 1812. It’s spread was due to the Congress

of Vienna about which we heard in the last session and it would seem

that whatever the Congress of Vienna did or didn’t achieve one of its

functions was to hold informal gatherings at salons, soirees, banquets

and balls where the waltz became popular. These diplomats then

took the waltz back to their own countries and across Europe. Hence

the spread of the Viennese waltz throughout the ballrooms of

Europe.

One of Johann I’s best well known works is the Radetzky March which

was commissioned in 1848 a significant year both on the home front

in Austria and throughout Europe with revolutions and fighting in

Italy. Field Marshall Graf Radetzky von Radetz was a Czech nobleman

and chief of the general staff during the later period of the

Napoleonic Wars. As Chief of the General Staff he was ordered by

the emperor to not resist the Italians who wanted to take control of

Austrian lands in Italy. He ignored this instruction and was then sent

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support by the Austrians (which reflects the complete state of

confusion on the part of the Imperial Court). This stirred the Austrian

people to greater patriotic feelings and later culminated in a defeat

of the Italians at the Battle of Custoza and the recovery of the whole

of Lombardy in August. The Radetzky March was commissioned to

celebrate this victory and was an immediate success. At its inaugural

performance the audience clapped in time to the stirring music, and

this tradition is still carried on today as those of us who have watched

the New Year’s Day Concert from Vienna will know. The audience is

conducted by the conductor of the orchestra and are usually

controlled considerably better than say those here at the last night of

the Proms. Radetzky died in 1857. Johann Strauss I was loyal to the

Emperor and a patriot and remained so during the uprisings and

revolutions of 1848. He did not want his sons to become musicians

and so his son Johann studied the violin secretly.

As is often the case, his sons, Johann II in particular, thought about

everything very differently from their father. While his father

remained loyal to the Emperor, Johann supported the

revolutionaries. For a time this adversely affected his career. He

missed out on the important appointment of KK Hofballmusikdirektor

many times because of his support for the revolutionaries and it

wasn’t until after his father’s death that he began to compose a

number of patriotic marches such as Kaiser Franz-Josef Marsch and

Kaiser Franz- Josef Rettungs Jubel-Marsch. He was finally appointed

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to this position in 1863 having composed enough patriotic pieces

dedicated to the Emperor Franz Josef I to ingratiate himself. He also

composed operettas, such as Die Fledermaus and the Gypsy Baron

and he composed over 400 waltzes, polkas and ballets. One of his

most famous of course is the Blue Danube waltz and the Trisch

Trasch Polka. He was known as the Waltz King and toured not only

Europe but to America as well. He composed too many pieces to

mention here and I suspect that most of us are familiar with them.

His brothers, Josef and Eduard also composed and conducted and

had successful careers.

So the question remains, what was it about the Strauss family music

that resonated with the times? These were times of revolution and

war. Whether these were caused by the rise of nationalism on the

part of the constituent countries that made up the Empire or by

rebellion on the part of the lower classes is a moot point. The

Emperor was clinging on to a - what seems to us with the benefit of

hindsight - a doomed and disintegrating empire. What was it about

the times that led to this dance music? It conjures up pictures of a

well-dressed elite, drinking expensive champagne and dancing the

night away in glittering ballrooms but I don’t think the Emperor was

part of this set. The tradition of the ball goes back to after the

Napoleonic Wars and no doubt the movement was inspired by the

diplomats and courtiers from all over Europe who attended the

Congress of Vienna and then took the waltz back to their own

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countries. The first opera ball was held in 1877 and has continued

since then with various breaks according to the political events in the

20th Century. Today there are still about 450 balls taking place in

Vienna each year. The season used to begin on Twelfth Night and

continue until Ash Wednesday to coincide with the carnival season,

but now the season has been extended back to the beginning of

November. The great composers of the day took much of their

inspiration from folk and peasant music in a bid to create nationalistic

feeling, Strauss also took inspiration from folk dances but created

something different, something that resonates more with the great

buildings of the Ringstrasse and the Secessionist movement. As AJP

Taylor says:

The alliance of the dynasty and the Jesuits saved the Habsburgs and defeated Protestantism in central Europe. It also gave to ‘Austrian’ culture the peculiar stamp which it preserved to the end. Austrian Baroque civilization, like the buildings which it created, was grandiose, full of superficial life, yet sterile within. It was theatre, not reality…..at its heart was a despairing frivolity, ‘hopeless but not serious’ was the guiding principle which the age of Baroque stamped upon the Habsburg world. (1)

Like all failing Empires were people clinging on to a romanticised

ideal of life while ignoring the signs of decline and stultification?

One of the things we tried to achieve in our study of 19th Century

musicians of the Hapsburg Empire was not to analyse and discuss the

composers’ music as such but to look at the influence of politics and

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sociology on these composers and how their music may in turn have

influenced attitudes and nationalistic feelings. The first part was not

too difficult, but the extent to which they influenced the mood for

independence and revolution was much less easier to define.

Reference

(1) AJP Taylor, The Hapsburg Monarchy, 1948, Hamish Hamilton,

P.14.

Margaret

Commentary on “The Habsburg Empire – the projection of power” PP presentation

1. (Title slide) Introduction

The Habsburgs had a sense of their own history that guided their development, and sought to increase, not merely retain, their landed possessions. Over time they acquired a common identity and purpose through a set of customs and beliefs about themselves. They can truly be described as a dynasty and not just a ruling family.

The earliest known Habsburg ruler, Radbot (c 985 – 1045) built a castle in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland. The Habsburgs acquired scattered possessions in the Upper Rhine region of Alsace, the Black Forest and Northern Switzerland, and by the late 13th century were centred roughly in modern-day Austria and Slovenia, reaching southwards to the Adriatic coast, governing a disparate mixture of minor principalities, duchies, lordships and counties.

Frederick 3 (1415-1493) was the first Habsburg ruler to be elected as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), established by the Pope’s

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coronation of Charlemagne, King of the Franks, in 800 AD. His son Maximilian 1 (1459-1519) was elected Emperor. Maximilian added the duchy of Burgundy which included the Low Countries through his marriage to Mary of Burgundy, and Castile and Aragon through his son Phillip (the Handsome)’s marriage to Juana (the Mad) of Castile. Through their son Charles 5, “the Spanish line”, came Spain including her possessions in the New World, parts of Italy (Naples and Southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia), as well as some North African coastal possessions.

2 Portrait of Maximilian 1, Albrecht Durer (1519)

To promote himself and his family and to display their right to rule, Maximilian 1 commissioned paintings such as this one depicting him as a modern-day Roman Emperor holding a pomegranate, the ancient symbol of Royalty and the Church, the fruit standing for resurrection and eternal life.

He travelled continuously throughout his Empire collecting information that could further his dynastic ambitions and influencing local princes, achieving the enlargement of the Empire.

Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) is regarded as the greatest German Renaissance artist. His work included altarpieces, portraits and self-portraits, engravings and woodcuts. Born in Nurnberg, he travelled to Italy in 1494-5 which greatly influenced his work.

3 Family of Maximilian 1, Bernard Strigel (1516)

Maximilian instructed Strigel to paint this family portrait bringing together the living and the dead to state his dynastic ambition for his grandson Ferdinand to marry Anne of Jagiello and so achieve a union

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of the Habsburg and Magyar Jagiello Royal families. This “prophecy” eventually happened.

The people depicted in the painting span a period of about 30 years from the death of Maximilian’s wife Mary of Burgundy to the “double betrothal” of 1515 at the Vienna Conference of Princes between (1) Louis, son of Vladislaus 2 (King of Bohemia and Hungary) and Mary (2) Mary’s brother Ferdinand and Vladislaus’ daughter Anna, that united the two Royal houses.

The painting depicts (top row):

- Maximilian 1

- Philip the Handsome

- Mary of Burgundy

(bottom row):

- Ferdinand 1

- Charles 5

- Louis 2 of Hungary (Maximilian’s adopted son)

There are many historical inaccuracies. Mary of Burgundy had died in 1482 at the age of only 25. Philip the Handsome (father of Charles 5) died in 1506. Nor had Charles 5 and Ferdinand 1 met at this point, as they were brought up in the separate Spanish and Central European lines of the family respectively.

Maximilian’s adopted son Louis was not yet married to Mary of Hungary thus becoming King of Hungary (1516-26). After Louis was killed at the battle of Mohacs fighting the Turks he was succeded by Maximilian’s grandson Ferdinand.

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Bernard Strigel was a German portrait and historical painter of the Swabian school. He was greatly admired by Maximilian 1 who commissioned numerous works from him.

4. Maximilian commissioned or wrote several art projects intended to glorify for posterity his life and deeds and those of his Habsburg forebears.

Theurdank (pub. 1517) is a book of poetry that he may have composed, or was written either by his chaplain Melchior Pfintzing or Secretary Marx Treitsauerwein, or a committee of all three. It tells the fictionalised and romanticised story of his journey to marry Mary of Burgundy in 1477. He referred to such projects as his Gedechtnus (memorial). Others in this category are the poem Freydal and chivalric novel Weisskunig (White King).

The name of the hero, “Theurdank”, means “noble or knightly thought”. The poem follows in the tradition of Arthurian romances exemplifying the chivalric code such as “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and Malory’s “Morte d’Arthur” blending myth, adventure, love, enchantment and tragedy.

Maximilian intends to leave the World a legacy of nobility and the upholding of Christian values. This finds later echoes in the pious Catholicism of subsequent Emperors, and the role of the Holy Roman Empire as a promoter of the Counter-Reformation.

The poem was lavishly illustrated by 118 woodcuts designed by Leonhard Beck and a stable of other artists. The graphic design of the work, using a blackletter “fraktur” typeface, was novel and greatly influenced later artists.

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5. The Triumphal Procession (Triumphzug)

Lacking the funds to stage such a ceremony, Maximilian 1 did the next best thing and commissioned this decorative frieze depicting his fictional “Royal entry” on the lines of a victorious Roman General’s triumphal return to Rome. It was intended to express the Emperor’s power, magnificence and Imperial stature.

The prints depict standard bearers on horseback carrying the flags of his many titles and territories, inhabitants of exotic lands some leading animals such as elephants, carriages full of family ancestors, and others carrying musicians, soldiers, prisoners-of-war, gladiators and jousting knights. There is also a baggage train complete with mobile kitchen.

The sheer scale of the work is impressive. A total of 139 known woodcut prints were put together to make up a composite print of 177 ft. in length. It was intended to be pasted to the walls of city hall council chambers and palaces to (in Maximilian’s words) “proclaim for posterity the noble aims of their erstwhile ruler”. It could also be bound into a book for the wealthy to purchase.

Maximilian commissioned two similar works of equally monumental length, “Triumphal Arch” and “Large Triumphal Carriage”, both largely designed by Albrecht Durer. In the event, these were published in 1522 after Maximilian’s death.

6 The Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder

By the time this painting was produced, Ferdinand 1 was Emperor and the Empire covered a significant amount of the territory of central Europe, not to speak of its possessions in the New World.

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The story of the Tower of Babel (meaning “confusion”) appears in the Bible (Genesis 11) as an Origin myth to explain why the various people of the World speak different languages. It records that after the Great Flood, mankind (who at this point spoke a common language) reached the land of Shinar and built a great tower that reached to the Heavens to celebrate their prosperity. To punish them for their idolatary God caused them to speak in different languages so they could not communicate with each other, thus the Tower could not be built, resulting in the people being scattered across the World.

One hindrance to the creation of a unified and homogeneous Empire was the composite nature of the states and kingdoms which it comprised and resultant lack of a single overarching language, which put it at a disadvantage compared to a single sovereign state. Read in this light, the painting is a political message illustrating the linguistically and culturally diverse nature of the Habsburg Empire.

7. Battle of Leipzig (1813), Peter Krafft

This painting commemorating the victory of the Allies’ Sixth Coalition over the French at Leipzig in Saxony is intended to instil patriotism in all the constituent parts of the Habsburg or Austrian Empire. The Austrians contributed over a third of the allied troops who took part. It depicts the scene after the battle when the Allied Commander Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg (on horseback) reports his victory to the three Allied Monarchs, (from L to R)

Tsar Alexander 1 (Russia) Emperor Francis 1 (Austria) King Frederick William 3 (Prussia)

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Leipzig (also known as the Battle of the Nations due to the many nationalities involved) was the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, over half a million soldiers being committed. Napoleon was decisively defeated, destroying the power of the French Empire East of the Rhine.

Krafft achieved fame as a painter of monumental battle scenes, who could also paint interior scenes with great sensitivity.

8. The Militia Man’s departure (1813), Peter Krafft

In contrast to the Battle of Leipzig, this painting of a scene from the “Wars of Liberation” (as the Napoleonic period was known) shows a family being painfully separated by War. The departure of the father to join his comrades is on one level a depiction of human suffering, but on another level celebrates the citizen-soldier’s willingness to sacrifice himself not only for his family but also for his country.

Krafft helped to establish Viennese genre painting by such works.

9 Coat of Arms of the house of Habsburg

By incorporating their Coat of Arms with the national flag of Austria and the eagle as the symbol of the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburgs emphasised both their secular and spiritual power.

The left side of the shield depicts the flag of Austria, represented here by a vertical bar of red/white/red, with (on the left side) a red lion rampant and on the right, three eagles on a diagonal red bar. On the right side of the shield, a crowned eagle on an azure blue background represents the spiritual rule of the Habsburgs as Holy Roman Emperors.

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10. Comparison of Coats of Arms of Sigismund of Luxembourg and Charles 5.

The Coat of Arms of Sigismund of Luxembourg (1411-1437) who was the first Habsburg ruler to display the double-headed eagle as his Imperial Arms, is an unadorned double eagle with red talons and crowned heads shown by being circled in red.

By the time of Maximilian’s reign, numerous territories had been added to the Habsburg inventory. This is shown by the large number of small shields that cover his Coat of Arms which is superimposed on the body of the double eagle.

11. Habsburg Coat of Arms post 1867.

After the Compromise of 1867 that established the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, the Habsburg Arms displayed elements of the Austrian and Habsburg arms, and the arms of the Kingdom of Hungary.

IAN

The Habsburg Art Collections

Under the rule of the Emperor Franz Joseph I (1) in the late 19th century, Vienna, capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became a cosmopolitan city, one of Europe’s largest with a population of over two million, and with a great flowering of culture, the arts and architecture. He commissioned the construction of two greatmuseums – the Museum of Fine Arts (KHM – Kunst Historisches Museum) and the Museum of Natural History – principally to house the various collections made over the preceding centuries by some of

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his forbears. Brought together, classified and systematized, they form the basis of the present day holdings.

On 17 October 1891, the Emperor himself opened the new Museum of Fine Art (2) housing the Picture Gallery and other Imperial collections, admission one crown. So what are these collections and who were the principal collectors?It was Rudolf IV, (3) Duke of Austria (1339-1365), who first assumed, yes assumed, the title of Archduke Palatine in the hope of gaining an equal status with the Electors of the Holy Roman Empire. Energetic and ambitious, he was the most dazzling Habsburg of the 14th century. Dead at the age of 26, he nevertheless left a culturaland political legacy of great importance for the future of Austria. He built up Vienna to rival Prague, paving the way for the future role it was to play, and in 1365 founded the University of Vienna. He also founded the first Habsburg Treasure, which included gold and silver items, coins and medals, precious stones and jewellery, manuscripts, objects from nature and works of art:

Maximilian I (1459-1519) – this is the famous portrait by Durer. (4) Through his policies of war and marriage, he extended his own power base, and at the same time laid the foundations on which the Habsburgs were to become a great power. And in doing so, he further extended the Habsburg holdings of art. He introduced a system of Court Patronage: in the late fifteenth and in the sixteenth century, a new appreciation of artists gave rise to patronage of the arts and the collecting of art objects. Both became part and parcel of the image of a cultivated, educated prince, and of the reputation of a family. Art and artists were accorded high status; a position as Court Painter brought both prestige and a good income. Maximilian metDurer while staying in Nurnberg, and, impressed by his work, appointed him official Court Artist, commissioning several projects, like this portrait, to commemorate himself and to help secure his own fame and power as well as the glory of the House of Habsburg. He had a good eye for self-aggrandisement and he enlisted artists to

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ensure his image would long outlive him. He spent vast sums of money doing so, saying “ He who does not provide for his memory while he lives, will not be remembered after his death.”[His daughter, Margaret of Austria, summoned many artists to her court, and her nephew, the Emperor Charles V who grew up at her court, amassed a vast collection which now forms the foundations of the Prado in Madrid.]The first of the great collectors was Archduke Ferdinand II (1529-1595) (5) who ruled over Tyrol in the sixteenth century. Cultivated and highly educated, he resided at Schloss Ambras (6) near Innsbruck which he extended specifically to house his famous Cabinets of Art and Curiosities in the Kunstkammer and Wunderkammer of the castle. These included most of the objects from the collections of earlier Habsburgs. There were works of art – paintings, drawings andsculptures – as well as coins, medals, gold and silver, precious stones, jewellery, books, clocks, early scientific instruments, fossils, stuffed animals, birds and fish, and many other objects. Visiting European potentates considered it an honour to contribute a gift of their own, like the gold and enamel salt dish by Cellini (7), given by Charles IX of France. There were two items deemed to be of particular value, andthus to be kept by the head of the family for all time:

1) The Ainkhurn (8), the so called horn of a unicorn, (in fact a narwhal tusk), valued because it was considered to possess magical powers, and

2) The Holy Grail, no less, - an agate bowl (9) of great religious significance. In Schloss Ambras, Ferdinand’s collection includedmany portraits of his predecessors, members of other princely families, and famous personalities, and these – about 1000 in total are now in the Coin Collection in the KHM. He also amassed a collection of arms and armour, now in the KHM, and, in hisWunderkammer, great Cabinets of Curiosities, natural objects or created ones, intended to reflect the sum of knowledge of the world as well as to reflect and project his own erudition, wealth and power.

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The next great collector is the Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) (10) in the late sixteenth century. In 1583 he established his imperial capital in Prague, making it the political and cultural focus of the Empire. He was a patron of the arts and an avid collector, particularly of paintings. Sadly most of his collection disappeared or was dispersed from Prague when the city was plundered by Swedish forces in 1648.Although only parts of it are today extant in the Vienna Collections, he remained a source of inspiration for later Habsburger art patronage. He in turn was inspired by the art treasures of Charles V and Philip II of Spain, where he had grown up, to become perhaps the most important collector of his time, both of paintings and, likeFerdinand before him, many ‘curiosities’, together with many beautiful objects in gold, ivory, amber, agate and crystal. He had agents scouring Europe for new items, as well as workshops at his court producing art objects. These included goldsmiths who made what was to become the Imperial Dynastic Crown. (11) Like some of his fellow Habsburgs, he was fascinated by mechanical objects and automata, employing a famous watchmaker to create things for him (12) – maybe not this actual one, but objects like it.

But it was in the medium of painting that Rudolf’s personal taste is most clearly revealed. Art for him was not only a means of projecting his princely magnificence; it was a matter of real interest and concern. From 1583 until his death 29 yeas later, he gathered a circle of artists around him, including Spranger, Hans von Aachen, Adrien de Vries and many others. He acquired many works by Italian painters e.g. Caravaggio (Madonna of the Rosary)(13), Veronese, Correggio, (Jupiter and Io) (14), Titian, and more, and he appointed Giuseppe Arcimboldo as Court Painter, Court Decorator and Court Costume Designer. Here is Rudolf, (15) depicted by Arcimboldoas Vertumnus, Roman god of the seasons. Such works by Arcimboldo may seem lightweight and simply amusing to us today, but then they were held in high esteem. Together with his brother, Ernest, he spared no expense in acquiring works by Durer, such as this ‘Adoration of the Trinity’ (16), and many by Brueghel, including

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‘The Tower of Babel’(17), ‘The Peasant Wedding’,(18) and ‘Hunters in the Snow’.(19).

Some historians have blamed Rudolf’s pre-occupation with art as the reason for the political disasters of his reign. Be that as it may, his collections were certainly the most impressive in the Europe of his day, and it is thanks to him that the KHM today has the world’s largest holding of paintings by Brueghel, a considerable number ofworks by Durer, many masterpieces of Italian Mannerism, such as those of Correggio, as well as works by his Prague Court painters.Our last great collector is the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (1614-1662)(20): a non-ruling member of the dynasty, but a decisive figure in the founding of the Vienna Picture Gallery. This is the Teniers portrait of him in armour. He was the most important Habsburg collector of paintings, and his collection today forms a seminalpart of the KHM holdings.

Like other Habsburg collections, Leopold Wilhelm’s reflected how he saw himself and also functioned as a display of his status and authority. His Court Painter – David Teniers the younger – celebrated his patron’s picture collection in a number of “gallery paintings”. Leopold Wilhelm commissioned different versions in order to send them to the major courts of Europe. This version(21), still at the KHM, is the one he sent to his brother, Emperor Ferdinand III, in Vienna. It depicts Leopold Wilhelm visiting his collection accompanied by Teniers. He assembled this collection of some 1400 works – mainlyVenetian and Netherlandish – during the period 1646-1656 when he was Governor of the Netherlands.

The sixth child of Emperor Ferdinand II, he was gifted and intelligent, and destined for a career in the Church. He was elected a Bishop at the tender age of twelve, and held many ecclesiastical offices and titles, including Prince of the Church and Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights – a Catholic order. During the Thirty Years War hetwice commanded the Imperial Army, though his success in doing so, as in his Governorship of the Netherlands, is debatable.

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But it was during his time in the Netherlands that he was able to indulge his true interest in life: he became an avid collector of artworks, spending immense sums in the acquisition of paintings, drawings and objets d’art. He commissioned worksfrom over sixty artists, many of them Flemish or Dutch; he patronized contemporary Baroque painters and sculptors, and he boosted his holdings with the acquisition of a large number of works from English collections which went on the market following the execution of Charles I. He had works by – among many others – Janvan Eyck, Raphael(22), Giorgione, Titian(23) and Rubens(24). When, in 1656, he resigned his Governorship and returned to Vienna, the collection went with him, to the Stallburg Gallery in the Hofburg. On his death, the collection became imperial property, and now forms the core of the KHM holdings, surrounded by the works collected by his fellow Habsburgs.

Christine

SESSION 4

“The Good Soldier Svejk and his fortunes in the world war”

1. Introduction

“The Good Soldier Svejk and his fortunes in the world war” was published in 1921/ 1923 in Czech

It was intended as a six volume work , but only three volumes were completed , and a fourth was in progress, at the time of the author’s death in January 1923

The book is a satirical account ( or perhaps a black comedy) of a Czech infantryman serving in the Austro-Hungarian army in 1914-15 , as he joins up, becomes embroiled in the Empire’s bureaucracy, and slowly bumbles his way towards the fighting against the Russians on the Eastern Front in Galicia.

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The most famous book in Czech, translated into 50+ other languages. First published in English 1930

Its appeal lies in :

the little guy’s struggle against “the system” Swejk’s stoicism and good humour, despite many

tribulations avoiding reality by being (or pretending to be) an idiot using others’ perceptions of his “idiocy” as a mask for

the use of cunning , subterfuge, deflection and delay in achieving “an easier life”

the long ,rambling , anecdotes for every occasion from Swejk

the satire on war and the futility of war the absurdity of military discipline in a “cannon fodder”

army contrasting the pretensions of authority figures and

the institutions they represent - monarchy, church , army – with their weaknesses and failures

the illustrations by Josef Lada (see above) above all, its humanity

Along the way, we learn much about the Empire and why it did not survive the war

2. The author: Jaroslav Hasek

Hasek was born in Prague in April 1883, the son of a maths teacher who died of alcoholism in 1895

A bright - but lazy- schoolboy, who became a drifter, prankster and political activist, protesting against the

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monarchy and “German dominance” in Czech life as early as 1897. A “Bohemian” in both senses of the word.

Worked as a journalist and writer , often engaged in political agitation on the left

Married Jarmila Mayerova in 1910 and a son, Richard, born in 1912. Marriage dissolved soon after

A prototype “Swejk” evident in writing as early as 1911 /1912

Called up to serve in the Army in 1915 in the 91st infantry regiment (same as Swejk) and some of his Army colleagues eventually mutated into characters in “Swejk”

Captured by the Russians in September 1915 and sent to camps in Kiev, then the Urals. Eventually recruited by the Russians in a Czech Legion ( Slavic solidarity) and then became a Bolshevik apparatchik in 1918

Returned to Czechoslovakia in 1920 and most of “Swejk” written over next two years. Self-published Volume 1 , but success led to commercial publication and modest financial success

Died on January 3 1923 aged 39

3. Josef Swejk

Age uncertain Family : One brother , a maths teacher Home : Prague Speaks “common Czech” and a bit of German. Displays a

wide knowledge of Czech culture and folklore Served in the Austro-Hungarian army in Italy before the

Great War , but discharged for “being an imbecile” Occupation : Dog dealer (stealer)

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Disposition: good natured and garrulous Favourite haunt : the pub called U Kalicha ( The Chalice) in

Prague Ailments : rheumatism Catchphrase : “Humbly report , sir”

SWEJK INTERVENES IN THE GREAT WAR

‘So they’ve killed Ferdinand,’ said the charwoman to Mr Swejk who, having left the army many years before, when a military medical board had declared him to be chronically feeble-minded, earned a livelihood by the sale of dogs – repulsive mongrel monstrosities for whom he forged pedigrees. Apart from this occupation, he was afflicted with rheumatism, and was just rubbing his knees with embrocation.

‘Which Ferdinand, Mrs Müller?’ asked Swejk, continuing to massage his knees. ‘I know two Ferdinands. One of them does jobs for Prusa the chemist, and one day he drank a bottle of hair oil by mistake; and then there’s Ferdinand Kokoska who goes round collecting dog manure. They wouldn’t be any great loss, either of ‘em.’ ‘No, it’s the Archduke Ferdinand, the one from Konopiste, you know Mr Swejk, the fat, pious one.’

‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Swejk, ‘that’s a fine thing. And where did this happen?’

‘They bumped him off at Sarajevo, sir, with a revolver you know. He drove there in a car with his Archduchess’

4. The plot

Swejk announces his enthusiasm for the war and declares his loyalty to the Emperor

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After making some politically sensitive remarks in a pub, he sent to prison by the secret police , but is declared insane and transferred to an asylum

Swejk gets his charlady to wheel him to the army recruitment office , where his zeal to serve causes a sensation , but he is then sent to a hospital for malingerers due to his rheumatism

He finally joins the army as batman to a chaplain (A Catholic priest who is in fact Jewish and neither celibate or sober) who “loses” Swejk in a game of cards to Lt. Lukas.

Lukas is posted to a march battalion at Ceske Budejovice (91st Infantry Regiment) , but Swejk gets lost on his way there before being arrested as a spy and deserter, and eventually returned to his unit , which is posted to Galicia

The journey to Galicia is slow and disrupted frequently. Swejk is arrested again after getting involved in an affray with Hungarian soldiers

Eventually nearing the front , Swejk ( having found an abandoned Russian overcoat) is taken prisoner as a suspected Russian deserter or spy and sentenced to execution by the Austrians , which he avoids by impressing a buffoonish colonel with his stories

He returns to his unit just as it is going up to the front, but this is where the book ends. He never reaches the front or fights the Russians.

5. What does the book tell us about the Empire?

We need to remember that the book’s author had been antagonistic to the Empire all his adult life on political, nationalist and class grounds. We also need to remember that the book was written in the immediate aftermath of a

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long and bitter war, in which the people of the Habsburg Empire had suffered terribly , leading to the dismembering and discrediting of the Empire

All the main arms of the Habsburg state are lampooned: The Emperor and the royal family , the “standing army” (soldiers), the “sitting army” ( bureaucrats), the “kneeling army” ( priests) and the “listening army” (spies and informers)

The Czechs were drawn into a war they did not understand , fighting for an Empire to which many of them had little loyalty (140,000 Czechs died in the war)

Swejk’s loyalty to the Empire, and personal devotion to “His Imperial and Royal Majesty “, was seen as a symptom of his imbecility by many of the people he meets

Frictions between different nationalities in the Empire’s army ( for example , the fight with Hungarians on the way to Galicia)

Officers are seen as remote and often stupid. Most were contemptuous of the troops they led, and to whom they often behaved with brutality or indifference. Lt. Lukas was an exception and is a more sympathetic figure

The Austro-Hungarian Army seems poorly organised with transport and supplies frequently interrupted .This was made worse by widespread corruption (The “Reich Germans” are portrayed as much better organised and supplied)

The troops are often preoccupied with getting enough food , beer and sex, and little “fiddles”, rather than any serious preparations for battle

German speakers are often authority figures to whom Swejk has to kowtow

Jews are often portrayed as outsiders

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6. The legacy of Swejk

Czechs identify strongly with Swejk: a personification of the national character? – downtrodden, but resilient and positive

The book was burned by the Nazis in 1933 The Communists disliked Swejk for the book’s parallels with

the ponderous and inefficient Soviet system Catch 22 – Joseph Heller The Phil Silvers Show (Sgt. Bilko) – Pte. Duane Dobermann Homer Simpson

Edith and Lindsay

Elizabeth of Bavaria – ‘Sisi’

In 1853, Princess Sophie of Bavaria, the domineering mother of 23-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph, preferring to have a niece as a daughter-in-law rather than a stranger, arranged a marriage between her son and her sister Ludovika's eldest daughter, Helene ("Néné"). Although the couple had never met, Franz Joseph's obedience was taken for granted by the archduchess, who was once described as "the only man in the Hofburg" for her authoritarian manner.[2] The Duchess and Helene were invited to journey to the resort of Bad Ischl, Upper Austria to receive his formal proposal of marriage. Fifteen-year-old Sisi accompanied her mother and sister and they traveled from Munich in several coaches. They arrived late as the Duchess, prone to migraine, had to interrupt the journey; the coach with their gala dresses never did arrive. The family was still in mourning over the death of an aunt so they were dressed in black and unable to change to more suitable clothing before meeting the young Emperor. While black did not suit eighteen-year-old Helene's dark coloring, it made her younger sister's blonder looks more

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striking by contrast.[3]

Helene was a pious, quiet young woman, and she and Franz Joseph felt ill at ease in each other's company, but he was instantly infatuated with her younger sister. He did not propose to Helene, but defied his mother and informed her that if he could not have Elisabeth, he would not marry at all. Five days later their betrothal was officially announced. The couple were married eight months later in Vienna at the Augustinerkirche on 24 April 1854. The marriage was finally consummated three days later, and Elisabeth received a dower equal to today's 240,000 USD.[4]

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Her mother-in-law is generally considered to be the source of the following malicious pamphlet.

…The natural destiny of a Queen is to give an heir to the throne. If the Queen is so fortunate as to provide the State with a Crown-Prince this should be the end of her ambition – she should by no means meddle with the government of an Empire, the care of which is not a task for women... If the Queen bears no sons, she is merely a foreigner in the State, and a very dangerous foreigner, too. For as she can never hope to be looked on kindly here, and must always expect to be sent back whence she came, so will she always seek to win the King by other than natural means; she will struggle for position and power by intrigue and the sowing of discord, to the mischief of the King, the nation, and the Empire..

The accusation of political meddling referred to Elisabeth's influence on her husband regarding his Italian and Hungarian subjects. When she traveled to Italy with him she persuaded him to show mercy toward political prisoners. In 1857 Elisabeth visited Hungary for the

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first time with her husband and two daughters, and it left a deep and lasting impression upon her, probably because in Hungary she found a welcome respite from the constraints of Austrian court life. It was "the first time that Elisabeth had met with men of character in Franz Joseph's realm, and she became acquainted with an aristocratic independence that scorned to hide its sentiments behind courtly forms of speech... She felt her innermost soul reach out in sympathy to the proud, steadfast people of this land..."[10] Unlike the archduchess, who despised the Hungarians, Elisabeth felt such an affinity for them that she began to learn Hungarian; the country reciprocated in its adoration of her.

This same trip proved tragic as both of Elisabeth's children became ill with diarrhea. While Gisela recovered quickly, two-year-old Sophie grew steadily weaker, then died. It is generally assumed today that she died of typhus.[7] Her death pushed Elisabeth, who was already prone to bouts of melancholy, into periods of heavy depression, which would haunt her for the rest of her life. She turned away from her living daughter, began neglecting her, and their relationship never recovered.

In December 1857 Elisabeth became pregnant for the third time in as many years, and her mother, who had been concerned about her daughter's physical and mental health, hoped that this new pregnancy would help her recover.[5]

Anna

Elizabeth of Bavaria: Early life and tragedies

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…The natural destiny of a Queen is to give an heir to the throne. If the Queen is so fortunate as to provide the State with a Crown-Prince this should be the end of her ambition – she should by no means meddle with the government of an Empire, the care of which is not a task for women... If the Queen bears no sons, she is merely a foreigner in the State, and a very dangerous foreigner, too. For as she can never hope to be looked on kindly here, and must always expect to be sent back whence she came, so will she always seek to win the King by other than natural means; she will struggle for position and power by intrigue and the sowing of discord, to the mischief of the King, the nation, and the Empire..

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Gloria

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WAS MAXIMILIAN DOOMED TO FAILURE?

Maximilian was born in 1832. He had a proper Hapsburg prince’s education which meant he studied history, technology, law, Greek, Latin, English, Hungarian, Slavic and Spanish, military studies, diplomacy, and fencing. One account says he was dreamy and artistic as a child, another that he was enthusiastic and often unruly. One account says he was a fairly good horseman, and another that he was a good horseman. I’m inclined to think that his riding wasn’t all that good as he was made a Rear Admiral of the Austrian Navy in 1855 aged 23 years, not a General in the cavalry unlike his elder brother Franz Joseph who achieved this rank in his early twenties. The Hapsburg pride was in their army, and to be in the cavalry was the aim of all the privileged classes. This point is made in Joseph Roth’s “Radetzky March” which although set in pre World War 1 years gives the picture of the hero – a not good horseman demoting himself from the cavalry to the infantry to the dismay of his father. The pride in the army gave rise to the Austrian national flag. It represents the tunic of a soldier covered in blood except for the strip; which his sash covered which remained white. Also the croissant is an emblem belittling the Turkish crescent as the Turks were defeated in their attempted invasion of Vienna. These are probably myths but make good stories.

It would appear that Maximilian was very fond of his mother. Before he was executed by firing squad on 19th June 1867 he gave each of the seven gunmen an ounce of gold and requested that he should not be shot in the head because he wanted his mother to see him one last time looking good as he lay in his coffin.

It is hard for me to imagine the privileged and isolated life the Hapsburgs led when I reflect on some of the constraints of our own constitutional royal family. For example it has to be the most exclusive public school for a “proper” education. Prince Charles at Cambridge had a restricted list of a hundred students, the only ones he was allowed to have contact with.

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Franz Joseph, at the age of eighteen came to the throne. Maximilian was sixteen. What could be the role of the younger brother? He had a lot of money, no responsibilities, travelled widely and had many affairs. He had grown into a tall – 6 ft. 2 ins. handsome man, diplomatic, gracious, good company and fun.

In 1855, at the age of twenty three he became a Rear Admiral of the Austrian Navy, which he modernised and improved greatly.

In 1857 he was made the Viceroy of Lombardy and Venetia. In that year he married Charlotte Coburg of Belgium, generally called Carlolta. She was seventeen at the time and was the more intelligent of the two and a driving force for their Mexican adventure. In Italy they were happy together although Maximilian continued to visit brothels. This says something about the role of women at the time. He was approached to become Emperor of Mexico in that year but he refused. In 1859 there was unrest in Italy and a war broke out for Italian freedom. Maximilian and Carlota fled to Brazil. He was dismissed from his office by Franz Joseph and made to give up his rights to the Austrian throne. Carlotas supported Franz Joseph. It was in Brazil that he caught a venereal disease which infected Carlota and they were unable to have children. In spite of this they kept up the appearance of a happy marriage although she insisted they slept apart, and he continued to have a series of mistresses.

In 1864 Maximilian was again invited to become Emperor of Mexico and he accepted, against the wishes of Franz Joseph. As the younger brother he had always desired to “out do” his older sibling. He accepted on the basis on the information provided by the conservatives in Mexico who wished to overthrow the government of President Benito Juarez, and also Napoleon 111 who wanted to collect a debt from Mexico and further his own imperialistic ambitions there. He was deceived not only by the conservatives but also by Napoleon who wanted him to be a puppet ruler influenced by France, while in fact most Mexicans resented his presence.

Maximilian came to Mexico with good intentions. He made genuine attempts to govern the country well and help the Mexican people as

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best he knew how. He was rather naive and unable to recognise the international intrigues that had put him on the throne, and the internal struggles within Mexico itself. He intended to rule with paternal benevolence. He saw himself as a protector of the peasants. He upheld former President Benito Juarez’s sweeping reforms – to the indignation of the landed conservatives. He was determined to abolish peonage (A peon was a day labourer enslaved to his debtor). He antagonised the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy by refusing to restore vast church holdings confiscated by Juarez. He even offered Juarez a position in his government which was refused. The treasury was bare. He had to use his inherited wealth for his daily expenses.

Imagine your cappuccino; a beautiful pattern on the top. Put in two sugar lumps, a little disturbance on the top.. and then it is stirred.

The timing was impossible. The Americas and Europe were fermenting nationalistic movements. In Mexico in 1861 the Liberals under Benito Juarez returned to Mexico City having won the War of Reform and passed the 1857 Constitution into law. The conservatives fled, taking the bulk of the Treasury and plotting to re-establish the monarchy under foreign rule, thus playing into Napoleon 111’s hand.

In 1823 the United States warned the European powers that they would not tolerate further colonisation or puppet monarchy in the Americas. Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Columbia had become independent and were recognised by the States. They particularly resented French presence in Mexico, but because of the civil War could take no action. The American Civil War’s main aim was not to free the slaves but not to lose the very prosperous rich southern slave states, thus to save the Union.

In 1864 Napoleon sent 6,000 troops and weapons to support Maximilian and the conservatives. They were defeated at Puebla on 5th May, which is now a national holiday. A further 20,000 troops were sent and Juarez was defeated and driven almost into Texas. Maximilian was crowned Emperor on 10th June 1864. But that month the American Civil War ended and the U.S. demanded

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the withdrawal of French troops from Mexico, saying their presence was a violation of the Monroe Doctrine (no toleration of colonisation or puppet monarch in the Americas). Things were getting difficult for Maximilian and Carlota in Mexico, so she travelled to Europe, never to return to Mexico, to try to muster financial support, and support in general, especially from France to no avail. The French withdrew in March 1867. Juarez moved back into Mexico City. Maximilian refused to abdicate feeling he could not honourably desert his people. He was made Supreme Commander of the Imperial army by his conservative Mexican backers – now diminished in number. At Queretaro his small force was surrounded, starved and finally betrayed into capitulation on 15th May 1867. President Juarez refused to grant clemency because thousands of Mexican lives had been lost in this latest struggle for independence from foreign domination. On 19th June Maximilian was executed on a hill outside Queretaro. He was calm before he was executed. His last words were, “I forgive everybody. I pray that everybody may also forgive me, and my blood which is about to be shed will bring peace to Mexico.”

What became of the other European characters in this saga?

Napoleon? France’s dominance of Europe eroded with the Prussians crushing victory over Austria in the Austro-Prussian War during June – August 1866. 1870at the Battle of Sedan the Prussians captured Napoleon. He was deposed and the Third Republic was created.

Franz Joseph? Among ordinary people the most popular Hapsburg Emperor/King in his two headed eagle empire. At least as far as Austria was concerned. He slept in a small single iron framed bed. He said his prayers to his God morning and evening at his lectern near his bed.

And Carlolta? Her mental health deteriorated. She lived well into her eighties. She went to bed with a doll called Max. She was a

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faithful wife and retained her love for Maximilian. She had always admired his liberal ideals and his pleasing personality.

I hope you are now able to answer the question with which I started. “Was Maximilian doomed to failure?”

MARY

SESSION 5

The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire

Was it inevitable?When did it become inevitable?Why did it become inevitable?I am of course talking about events over one hundred years ago and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire.

These are questions we should be thinking about in our last session.

Although today’s speakers will be mentioning these questions I would like to give you some ideas to think about.

One historian has said that the collapse of the Habsburg Empire became inevitable 28 January 1790 when Joseph II was forced to revoke his reforms and a long period of decline followed.

The Empire nearly fell apart in 1848 after the revolutions bbut recovered. Many historians trace its collapse to the Ausgleich with Hungary in 1867 when Austria became the unwilling partner with Hungary, when the Hungarian tail wagged the Austrian dog and the Habsburg Empire failed to form a federal state because of Magyar nationalism and intransigence. But perhaps the death knell of the Empire was rung on 7th October 1879 when Austria –Hungary formed a dual alliance with Germany.

If you want to read more about the decline and fall of the Habsburg Empire I recommend this book by Alan Sked.

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Postscript:

Having only now finished reading Alan Sked's book The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, Sked argues that right up to 1914 the Empire was a viable state with a reasonably just rule of law, a steadily growing economy, a proto-welfare state and was developing means of dealing with the nationality issues. Sked concludes that if the Axis powers had not been defeated by the Allies in the west in 1918 the Empire would have continued to survive and evolve. And moving forward in real time, instead of looking down the corridor of history, perhaps, after all, the collapse of the Empire was not inevitable.

Michael

Franz Kafka, a writer living through the end of Empire

The aim of this talk is to consider the life of Franz Kafka in the context of the final decline and collapse of the Habsburg Empire at the end of the period we have been considering in this course. I will first reflect a little on the themes of empire management and national identities that we have studied during the course and then consider how Kafka’s life reflected the Habsburg world as it had been and as that world drew to an end. In many ways Kafka the person is an exemplar and a product of that world. Terry will then reflect more fully on Kafka’s writing.

A key theme of this series of seminars on the final century or so of the Habsburg Empire has been the tension between central power and national identity. How did the Habsburgs sustain their hold over an Empire which contained within it a wide range of ethnicities, languages, cultures and both positive and negative economic trends?

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How did they manage the ebbs and flows of political, religious and ethical thought which arose both internally within the Empire and externally, for example in the rises and falls of Napoleon?

What we have in fact seen is that the Habsburgs had mixed success in managing these many tensions. They tried various approaches, ranging from autocracy through to some limited engagement with liberal democracy. We have seen how both circumstances and personalities influenced and determined the approach adopted at any one time. If the Habsburgs could be criticised for inconsistency in their style of Empire management in the period we have studied, this is a criticism that could be levelled at others too.

As we have seen, however, the overall trend for the Habsburgs through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was one of waning power and influence. This was in part because of the rise of national identities and aspirations which could no longer be contained within the concept of Empire. It must also in part have been due to the flow of history in which nations such as Prussia, the United Kingdom and the United States were coming to the fore with power based significantly on economic and industrial progress and worldwide trade.

Put simply, it might be said that the Habsburgs had had their time and were now unable to move with the times. Their model of Empire was broken and could no longer be fixed.

We have also learned from this course that, while there could be distinct nationalities, ethnicities and languages in its different constituent ‘states’, each of these ‘states’ had significant minorities within them. This was perhaps especially the case in Central Europe.

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This patchwork created its own tensions, especially where the minority German speaking population controlled the levers of government, education, law and commerce and where the German language was seen as the language of government and high culture and local languages were seen as the language of the common people or peasantry.

In his paper on ‘Nationalities and the Habsburgs’ in our third session, Peter referred to ‘the breakdown of authority and the collapse of the Empire’s legitimacy’ at the end of the Great War. As Peter commented, it soon became clear that the new nation states which emerged were to experience the same contradictions as had troubled the Habsburgs. Peter concluded that ‘Among the intermingled peoples of Central Europe there could be no perfect match between territory and ethnicity; each nation state was in effect a ‘little empire’ containing diverse and discontented populations.’

This is the diverse and discontented context into which the insurance officer and writer Franz Kafka was born. Kafka’s relatively short life spanned the period of the final decline of the Habsburg Empire, its collapse through the Great War and the troubled emergence of new nation states.

Kafka was born in Prague in 1883 and died from tuberculosis aged 40 in 1924. He was born into the influential, mainly middle class, German speaking community in Prague. His father Hermann had been a travelling salesman but became a fashion retailer employing up to fifteen people. His mother Julie was the daughter of a prosperous merchant and helped her husband run the family business.

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The Kafka family’s German speaking community was of course the community derided by the Czech speaking Jaroslav Hasek, as we heard in Edith and Lindsay’s paper on The Good Soldier Svejk in the fourth session. Interestingly, Hasek was born in the same year as Kafka and died in the year before him. It is most unlikely though that their paths ever crossed.

Kafka was also a Jew, although not a regularly practising one. His relatively short life spared him from almost certainly sharing the fate of his three younger sisters and no doubt countless others of his family and community who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Kafka lived almost his entire life in Prague and completed all his education in German speaking establishments in the city, first at the Deutsche Knabenschule (German Boys Elementary School), then the Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium (Old Town German Grammar School) and finally the Deutsche Karl-Ferdinands-Universität (the German Karl-Ferdinand-University), where he began as a chemistry student aged 18 in 1901.

After two weeks at university, Kafka switched to law, ostensibly because of the better career opportunities it offered. Certainly, his businessman father approved of this decision. However, probably the main reason for this switch for Kafka was that the longer period of study for a law degree – five years – gave him more time to participate in the artistic and literary student communities of Prague and to write his own work. Several of his literary friends made at

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university formed the circle of friends which Kafka inhabited throughout his working life, in particular Max Brod, who famously became the literary executor who didn’t carry out Kafka’s wishes that his work be destroyed after his death. Like Kafka, Brod studied law but was more interested in reading and in writing.

On graduating in 1905 Kafka began his career as an officer and manager in insurance companies. As with his law studies, a key criterion for Kafka in job selection was that the job left plenty of time for his literary activities. For this reason he resigned from his first post, which required him to work from 8:00 in the morning until 6:00 in the evening, within nine months. He very quickly found another post at the Workers Accident Insurance Company where the hours were more congenial and he was normally able to leave the office at 2:00 in the afternoon.

Despite this approach to his working life and the fact that he said he despised his job, Kafka was conscientious and well regarded by his employers, and was promoted rapidly. His role was to investigate and assess compensation levels for workers who were the victims of industrial accidents and to handle appeals from businesses against the levels of insurance premium they were required to pay – the legal model for industrial accident insurance was entirely funded by businesses, who were required to pay a premium based on the assessed dangers of their industrial processes to their workers.

No doubt through this work Kafka encountered many gruesome incidents relating to industrial injuries, as well as some convoluted claims and counterclaims, and one wonders how far these

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experiences in his professional insurance work contributed to his writing.

Because of his tuberculosis, which was diagnosed in 1917, Kafka’s working life was short and the Workers Accident Insurance Company provided him with a pension in 1918. At that time there was no cure for tuberculosis and the final years of Kafka’s life were lived under the cloud of this disease. Nevertheless, he continued to write and developed at least two intense if ultimately unsatisfactory relationships during this period. Kafka’s novel Das Schloss (The Castle) was written, but left unfinished, in the period 1922 – 1924. The question must be asked – but at the moment I don’t know the answer – how far the certainty of early death influenced Kafka’s imagination and his writing, although it is said that he first planned The Castle in 1914 and many of his key themes are consistent throughout his writing.

Although, as has been said, Kafka’s family and social circles were within the German speaking community of Prague, he did have a lively interest in the different communities around him in the city. Although his first language was German, he learned Czech at school, could speak and write Czech and received good grades. It is said that he spoke German with a Czech accent.

Similarly, although he was not a strongly practising Jew, Kafka developed a keen academic interest in the concepts of Judaism and an enthusiasm for the Yiddish language and Yiddish theatre.

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There is much academic debate about what Kafka was like as a person and about his social life. If one simply read his writings one would presume a tortured, anguished, even paranoid individual. This has indeed been the view of many literary critics, especially earlier ones. But Kafka was clearly a social animal with a close circle of like-minded friends. He liked the company of women and during his short life had several mainly brief relationships. He loved the theatre.

My own university German supervisor – over 40 years ago now – strongly encouraged us to think of Kafka as a man drinking in the pub with his literary friends, reading aloud his most recent writing and whose only problem was that he laughed more at his own work than his friends did! Similar observations about Kafka’s character have most recently been repeated in James Hawes’ biography, titled ‘Excavating Kafka’ (2008). Hawes describes Kafka as a canny, funny, worldly man who liked to relax by socialising with his many friends, visiting the occasional prostitute - and reading pornography. Hawes describes Kafka’s writing as 'black-comic tales of what happens to modern people who can't give up on the Old Ways’ – another link perhaps to our ‘end of Empire’ theme.

Looking ahead beyond Kafka’s life, the history of diversity and discontent across the Habsburg lands saw perhaps its last consequences in the Holocaust and in the Nazi invasions and annexations of Eastern European lands, which were at least in part to re-establish German speaking hegemony and protect German communities in those lands. There were of course many other more significant, non-Habsburg causes of the Second World War and the Holocaust. I am simply suggesting that the patchwork history of Habsburg dominion contributed to the political and cultural contexts

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and mindsets which made the unthinkable events of the Second World War somehow thinkable.

The post war migrations, forced or otherwise, of the German communities of Central and Eastern Europe brought an end to the historic pattern of German speaking domination in that part of Europe. However, in the modern day, we see similar tensions arising from the presence of strong but vulnerable minority communities, for example in the Crimea and in those Baltic states which still have Russian minorities in their populations.

Terry will now provide us with insights into Kafka’s work – the meaning of which is perhaps more disputed than that of any other European writer! My one reflection on Kafka’s writings for now is that they do reflect the complexities, confusions and uncertainties of a world in transition and in turmoil, a world in which nothing could be predicted, where tragically the unpredictable was to become reality.

It is not possible to do justice to the subject in a short talk like this, but I hope that I’ve been able to stimulate some thoughts about Kafka’s character and how it relates to his place in the history, geography and cultures of the final century or so of the Habsburg Empire.

Michael N.

Late Habsburg Vienna – a timeline

1841 Birth of Otto Wagner

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1848 Franz Joseph I becomes Emperor

1856 Inauguration of the Ringsstraße

1862 Birth of Gustav Klimt

1868 Birth of Koloman Moser; [birth of Charles Rennie Mackintosh]

Completion of Opera House

1872 [Birth of Aubrey Beardsley]

1872-91 Kunsthistorisches Museum

1886-87 Painting of staircase ceilings in the Burgtheater by Gustav and Ernst Klimt with Franz Matsch

1888 Completion of K•K Hofburgtheater (known simply as Burgtheater)

1890 Birth of Egon Schiele

1898 Completion of the Secession Building; architect J-M Olbrich, a pupil of Otto Wagner; gilded dome designed by Klimt; exterior decoration by Koloman Moser

Karlsplatz U-bahn pavilion, by Otto Wagner

Hofpavillon, Schönbrunn (Hietzing U-bahn), by Otto Wagner

Death of Empress Elisabeth

[Death of Aubrey Beardsley]

1898-99 Linke Wienzeile 38 by Otto Wagner, décor by Koloman Moser

1902 14th Secession exhibition, celebrating Beethoven; Klimt’s Beethoven frieze; Gustav Mahler conducts arrangement of part of Beethoven’s 9th symphony

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1903 Foundation of Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop)

1908 Franz Joseph I’s regnal jubilee (60 years); commemorative postage stamps designed by Koloman Moser

1903-12 Austrian Postsparkasse by Otto Wagner

1916 Death of Franz Joseph I

1918 ‘… and then they all died’: † Gustav Klimt; †Koloman Moser; †Otto Wagner (all commemorated in Hietzing cemetery); †Egon Schiele (Ober St Veit cemetery)

David and Hannah

AEIOU

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