The Afterlife of Austria-Hungary: The Image of the Habsburg Monarchy in Interwar Europe

Chapter Four: The Empire Epitomized: Franz Joseph

150 The emPire ePiTomized ideology of its political legitimacy. After all, everybody knew that the country was a dynastic state, and that its policies were always subordinated , or at least strictly related, to the interests of the Habsburgs. Among modern historians it was A. J. P. Taylor who formulated this principle most brilliantly: “In other countries’ histories the dynasties were but episodes; in the history of the Habsburg empire the nations were a complication in the history of the dynasty.”1 Second, Franz Joseph ruled his monarchy for sixty-eight years, and at the end of his reign hardly anybody could remember any other monarch . He took care to nurture his popularity and reputation. His birthday was the most celebrated public holiday, with music, eating, and drinking for everybody throughout the realm. Portraits of the hoary, whiskered emperor were to be seen in offices, cafés, palaces, and hotels. In his later years he became so remote from reality on the one hand, and so omnipresent on the other, that he was popularly considered a semimythical figure, a symbol rather than a real person. Both Robert Musil (sarcastically) and Franz Werfel (sadly) noted that one could doubt whether Franz Joseph was still alive, or whether he had ever existed .2 Richard von Schaukal claimed that he became “encased in his dignity like in armor” and therefore resembled a “remote star.”3 Leon Sapieha commented on the war years that “sometimes one could hear gossips, whispering that Franz Joseph had already died long ago, and that his death was kept in secret. The others, however, believed to see him soon at the front.”4 Finally, his personal power and influence were extraordinarily strong, even by late nineteenth-century standards, partially due to his peculiar constitutional position, and partially to his “legendary” authority and ability to nominate obedient ministers. Since his youth, Franz Joseph remained a devoted autocrat: a faithful son of his mother and diligent pupil of the princes Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and Felix of Schwarzenberg, all of them devout Catholics and reactionaries . Forced to accept the agreement with Hungarians and grant the constitution in 1867, all his remaining years he carefully guarded all his prerogatives, which were many.5 First, he fully controlled the joint Austro-Hungarian government, comprising the foreign and military affairs, and the joint ministry of finance. Second, his influence on the separate Austrian and Hungarian governments was also preponderant , especially after 1897, when the former could no longer form any The emPire ePiTomized 151 parliamentary majority. Actually, also in Hungary, where the government always depended on the parliament, his prerogative was to accept the legislature, both bills voted by the parliament and those proposed by the government. Surprisingly, Franz Joseph’s privileged position met with few complaints and little resistance; competing nationalities and parties preferred to seek his support and favors rather than challenge him. Interestingly, historians of the interwar period scarcely noted this phenomenon—only Joseph Redlich observed the peculiar nature of the opposition in the monarchy, which opposed governments and other parties but never the powerful monarch himself.6 Therefore, it does not seem astonishing that interwar authors tended to identify the person of the monarch with his country. The idea of a unio mystica of the monarch and the country had had a long tradition . Its most telling example was probably the Early Modern scholarly concept of aemulatio, a mystic similitude of two essentially different and unequal phenomena. During the Renaissance scholars used this concept to explain, or perhaps express, humanity’s similarity to the gods (and the Christian God), their dependence on the stars, or their destiny as members of a particular lineage. A number of interwar writers refer, at least rhetorically, to this concept , and suggest that Franz Joseph and his monarchy shared certain features and, most importantly, shared the same fate. Accordingly, with the aging of the emperor, the monarchy was weakening and declining. Karl Tschuppik, for example, claimed that “When Franz Joseph, the last link consolidating the monarchy, perished, the nationalities chose against the Habsburgs. They rendered justice to him (Sie haben ihm Recht gegeben).”7 The former sentence can be interpreted simply as the a posteriori description, emphasizing the emperor’s authority . The latter, however, openly suggests some mysterious influence of the monarch on his subjects, as if they had been waiting for his death to accomplish a plan that he would disapprove of. Leon...