William Tyler
The Rise of Nationalism in Vienna
William Tyler - The Rise of Nationalism in Vienna
- Thank you very much Wendy. It’s a dark, grey, miserable Worthing evening here in Southern England. Now today’s talk is about the failure of the Habsburg Monarchy to deal with the rising tide of nationalism within their empire. This will eventually lead to their defeat or will contribute to their defeat in World War I, and as the defeat in World War I bites in, it ends the Habsburg Empire, and the empire becomes fragmented in 1918. Now the story really begins quite a long way behind and before that, the story begins as many stories in modern European history begin in the year 1848. And I mentioned 1848 last week, and as most of you know, 1848 was the year of revolutions in Europe. And as part of that year of revolutions, the Austrian monarchy had to flee for their lives, and Hungary rose in revolt, and the crushing of the Hungarian revolt was a brutal one in the end by Austria. One result of it was they decided they needed a clean sweep in terms of the age of the monarch, that he came to the throne with clean hands, and so the throne came to Franz Josef, the nephew of the previous emperor, even though his father was alive, and the throne came to him at the age of 18, and he was, as it were, untainted by the past and was started with a clean sheet. He is to reign until his death in 1916. And I always find Franz Josef a complex character. He worked extremely hard, but as they always say, it’s not how long or how hard you work, but how good your work is. No one can doubt his energy. No one can doubt his commitment. What one can doubt is his understanding of the world of the mid 19th century, let alone his understanding of the world of the early 20th century.
Martyn Rady in his magisterial book, “The Habsburgs”, which is on my blog on your book list, and I’m going to use today, says this, although I’m going to talk about nationalities, there aren’t books written about the Habsburgs where you’ll find the chapter, the nationalities. So my talk is, I hope, useful to be able to understand what’s going on. ‘Cause if you read a book, you get a line here, and a line there, and a paragraph over there, and sometimes it’s difficult to bring it together. That’s what I’m going to try and do. But I wanted to start by reading this. I’ve just said that Hungary made a bid for independence in the revolutions of 1848, and was crushed militarily by the Austrians, and Rady writes, “Emergency rule continued in Hungary until 1854”, that’s six years after the revolution. “And some offences remained under the direct jurisdiction of military courts for several years longer. On top of this, Hungary’s counties were abolished, and replaced by administrative districts headed by appointees of the Interior Ministry in Austria.” Unravel that, and it means that the Hungarians were being treated almost as a colonial people with German Austrians coming in to take control. Now you can imagine that is not going to dial down well in Hungary when the Hungarians had attempted in 1848 to create an independent Hungary. Now worse than that, they’ve now got German Austrians in positions of power within Hungary. Let me read a little bit more. “All institutions of self-government were abolished, and German was made the language of administration.” Now language, as I’m sure you all know, is really important. And if your language is taken away from you, everything is taken away, your culture, who you are, language is central. And this was a terrible mistake by Vienna to take language away, that is to say Hungarian, and to replace it with German.
Well, not good news. The result of this is not surprising. It didn’t lower tensions between Budapest and Vienna, but it heightened tensions. And in truth those tensions are going to be pulling quite a lot of the 19th century, and you could argue into the 20th, well you could argue very significantly, 'cause when we come to the end of the story of the Habsburgs in 1918, it’s Hungary still acknowledges a king, even though they won’t have the Habsburg King there, they still regard themselves as a monarchy until much later in the 20th century. We will come to that extraordinary story later. What is important now, is to say that the way Austria dealt with the Hungarians after the 1848 revolution was not the most sensible one. They should have been magnanimous in victory to use Churchill’s phrase. But they did see the need in Vienna to make some moves towards the modern world of the mid 19th century. And one of the things that had been demanded, by revolutionaries across Europe, were constitutions, and they decided to promote a constitution. They promoted a constitution for all of Austria-Hungary. You’ve all got a map sent you for today’s talk. It’s the whole of the country. All of Austria-Hungary had one constitution. So it ignored the question of nationalities.
So it created a constitution, but ignored nationalities. So from an absolute monarchy, it became a constitutional monarchy, and that might work, that might work in other parts of Europe, but it isn’t going to work in Austria Hungary. Why? Because they’ve ignored, again, the question of nationality. People, whether they were Ukrainian, whether they were Pols, whether they were Czechs, Hungarians, Austrians, Italians, owed allegiance to the emperor, not to the concept of an empire. This is not, as in Rome, in ancient Rome civis Romanus sum, I am a Roman citizen. I could have said that, sat here in Roman Sussex in 200 AD, or whatever, civis Romanus sum, I am a Roman citizen, even though all my blood might be Celtic. And someone could have been in modern day Israel, and say civis Romanus sum, but in no way were they Roman. But that is not how the Austro-Hungarian Empire operated. No one said, I’m Austro-Hungarian. They would say I’m German, they might say Austrian, they’re more likely to say German, I’m Hungarian, I’m Italian, I’m Czech, I’m Pol, I’m Ukrainian, whatever. So that issue of a constitution doesn’t really address the major question. And although they introduced a constitution, there’s a but to it. Let me just read this. “The March constitution”, because it was in the month of March, “The March constitution was in some respects a good one. It was centralist”, just what I’ve just said, “in the sense it envisaged one elected parliament for the whole Austrian Empire, including Hungary, a single central government and one constitution.” So they’re trying to create this empire as though it’s Rome, but they can’t because they’ve ignored, and haven’t resolved the nationalist question. Interestingly of course, the Romans did answer that question in this phrase, civis Romanus sum.
“Although the emperor retained strong powers, there were layers of elected bodies which possessed a devolved authority. The constitution additionally confirmed it abolition serfdom, legal equality, and all national groups they said are equal, and every national group has an enviable right to the use and cultivation of its language and nationality.” Yes, it said that, but it didn’t make it real because it’s no good saying to a Pol in Galicia you can elect one of your own to attend the parliament in Vienna because that really isn’t what they complained about In 1848. In 1848, they wanted a recognition, the very least that could have been done was to create a federal state in which the national parts of it, Hungary, Poland, Austrian-ruled Poland, whatever, were constituent federal with a fed-central federal government, and you can’t say there’s no example, the United States. It was a clear example of how you could do that, how the states had a legislature, but then you also had a government at federal level as well. But they never ever grasped that. They only grasped the federal, and not the local, or I should say regional or national. They didn’t do that. And whatever they said, people were dissatisfied. Well, imagine how people in California would’ve felt if they were allowed to have a member of the Senate, and the House of Representatives in Washington, but had no control over California then that would’ve been nonsense. America could not have happened, and yet America wasn’t divided, it isn’t that California was Hungarian, and Texas was Pol, or whatever.
They needed it desperately, and they did not do it. So why did they have this constitution? Well, Rady says, hang on a minute, “for all its merits, the constitution was a cynical ploy. Franz Josef was out to make his mark”. He’s this young 18, at this time, 19 year old, and he was lured by the dream". What was he lured by a dream of? Joining the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the German states. Remember they’d lost the German states at the abolition of the Holy Roman empire by Napoleon. He dreams of recovering that, he dreams of a greater supra-national state, which would’ve run from the Baltic and the North Sea, right the way across to Romania and Transylvania. A whole, it would’ve been massive, and dominated by Germans, Austrian-Germans, and German-Germans. That was his goal. He didn’t really have an interest in resolving this problem of nationalities because he wanted a German, greater German empire. Now Germany of course had been thinking of unification ever since Napoleon had set that particular hare running earlier in the 19th century. But of course Austria has a competitor for that, and the competitor is Prussia in northern Germany. Prussia, Protestant, Austria, Catholic. Prussia had no intention of creating a greater Austria, even if Prussia wasn’t a member, because Prussia would then be squeezed, and could not survive. Actually, Franz Josef soon lost interest in the constitution, and in 1851 he’s now 20, he decided to abolish the constitution, and ruled by a series of announcements. He gave himself the right to make laws, absolute monarchy. In 1852, he gave himself the right, well, to be Prime Minister.
He declared that he would be his own Prime Minister. So although there’s a parliament, it’s a toothless one, by 1852, and he’s reestablished absolutist rule. Now that is not feasible in the world of 1852. It simply doesn’t wash, but it lasted a decade. It did last into the 1860s. Rady writes this, he says, if I can find the right page I will even read it. Here it goes. He writes this, “This introduced a decade of neo-absolutism”, neo because they’ve moved beyond it, now they’ve gone back to it, “of neo-absolutism or neo-Caesarism”, Caesar, empire, imperialism, “when Franz Josef ruled as a dictator. Both terms are recent ones, At the time, the type of government, practised by Franz Josef, was known simply as absolutism, or more tellingly as bureaucratic absolutism”. All these phrases can be confusing. It’s simply that he turned his back on a constitutional monarchy, which was developing with the 1849 March constitution, and by 1852, he’s returned the entire empire to an absolutist monarchy, as it had been before the revolutions of 1848. “The Emperor imposed his will through administrative apparatus, but the bureaucrats also had their own political agenda, which was to maintain a reforming programme. They called themselves the party of enlightenment.” Now we’ve got a problem here. We’ve got the Emperor who’s ruling absolutely, but the civil service, and we really mean a Viennese German civil service, so a highly educated group.
We’re not talking about Ukrainians, Pols or whatever from Galicia, we’re talking about highly educated Viennese elite, and they don’t like the idea of absolutism, and they call themselves a party of enlightenment, and they try to pull the emperor back if he was to go too far. So there’s no agreement at the top. You say, well he could file the civil servants. Well no, because they’re not old-fashioned mediaeval advisors. This is a civil service that’s required to run the bureaucracy of the empire, to bring the taxes in, for example, to supply the army with guns and whatever. So the civil service is not something that can be simply gotten rid of. Rady goes on to say, “they were liberals in the sense of believing in individual empowerment through education, legal equality, freedom of the press and of association, and the removal of economic constraints”. And that’s the problem. This runs counter to what Franz Josef is attempting to do. Franz Josef might want to present himself as an enlightened monarch, as though he was in some 18th century, on some 18th century throne, but that horse has long bolted. The choices are an absolute monarchy, now desperately out of date, never to return even in France after 1848, it had gone in 1830, absolutism isn’t the answer. A constitutional monarchy would’ve been an answer, but it would have to deal with nationalities. This is me and my view. I think in short, the chance to reset the empire after the 1848 fiasco forum failed. The Habsburgs missed the opportunity in the 1850s, to turn themselves into a federal constitutional monarchy. They didn’t have to go, and turn themselves into a federal republic like America, that would not have been necessary. In fact, I’m not sure that that could have been achievable, but they could have been a federal constitutional monarchy. But they didn’t, and I’m of the view that the failure to deal with 1848 inevitably leads to the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918.
Okay, It’s a long way ahead, but I think there’s a continuity between 1848 and 1918. Now, if you don’t agree with that, you can cite, for example, there were reforms in 1866, and Rady writes this of the reforms of 1866, and they were not insignificant. “A real parliament, even though it retained the old name of the Imperial Council, was made up of two houses, an upper house of high aristocrats and churchmen, and a lower house comprising deputies sent by the diets, whose consent was needed for all legislation. New regulations published at the same time, laid down qualifications for voting to the diets, extending the franchise to about a quarter of the adult male population.” This is 1866 so that’s not anything out of complete step with the rest of Europe, Britain for example. “And it introduced a complicated procedure for casting ballots.” Yeah, now that’s where we get into difficulties. The way the ballots were set up favoured the German speaking population. Some of the emperor’s powers were now withdrawn, and his remaining powers were significant, but they’re not on the home front. He’s given responsibility still for foreign affairs, and he’s given responsibility for the army, which was a Austro-Hungarian army, that’s all true, and he chose the government. In other words, he chose the minister.
So that’s an enormous power, but at least in 1866, they were moving forward, and had you been some sort of equivalent to the United Nations checking on the status of democracy and constitutionality, and your job was to report on Austria-Hungary, you would’ve given it quite high marks for moving forward, on the assumption that he would continue to move forward. If you’ve been bright enough, in that report in 1866, you would also have said that the nettle of nationalism has still not been grasped, and nationalism, in all the various nationalities in the empire, did not decline after 1848, but actually increased. It’s as though you are boiling something on a stove, and you turn the heat up, and if you turn the heat up, you know it doesn’t immediately boil over, and you might just ignore it, but it’s cranking up gradually, and no one is prepared to deal with that. And Rady in his book states that Franz Josef’s absolutism, even though ameliorated by the 1866 Parliament, Franz Josef’s absolutism was the incubator of nationalism. That’s just what I’ve said. The heat doesn’t go down, they should have been taking the heat down instead of which their actions are taking the heat up. Franz Josef is reported to have said about nationalism, and this tells you everything, “Nationalism”, he said, “was little more than a middle class infection”. Well there’s ignorance for you, there’s arrogance for you, “a little more than a middle class infection”. It’s rather like the British former Queen Mother who once said she listened to a radio programme, which people in Britain will remember called “Mrs. Dale’s Diary”, and she was once asked why she listened to “Mrs. Dale’s Diary” every day, because, she said, she “wanted to know what the middle classes were thinking”.
Well, that’s was Franz Josef’s view. Nationalism isn’t important, just these awful middle classes, and always the view, or were often the view of absolutist rulers, that the people, the people, the people at the bottom love, love us. Every time we appear they clap and they wave flags. It’s only the middle classes who are sniffy about us. That was his view, and it was a terrible view, and it’s a view that he still holds through to 1916, and it’s a catastrophic view to hold in the last half, and the beginning of last half of the 19th, and the beginning of the 20th century. So let me come then to this central question of nationalism within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Let me just read you a tiny piece here just to sort of set the ball rolling. “Before 1848, nationality hade been just one social bond among many, vying with religion, region, and kindred, and whether a noble, peasant, townsman or priest, now it became the predominant force. Its potency enhanced by an oppressive regime bent on centralization and uniformity.” Exactly what I’m saying. The position is being made worse, the heat is being taken up, uniformity across the empire. And you said, well, of course that’s what it needed. No, it does not need it. It needed federation, and a realisation, that you couldn’t impose a centralist view on what is a decentralised state. There was no way, there was no way that this state of Austria-Hungary could ever become a centralised state because the more it became centralised, the more resistance it met from those, as it were, on the periphery. Let me continue to read. “The events of 1848 provided a story around which ideas and nation have trusted, of a heroic struggle for freedom, of champions of the national cause, and of martyrs who suffered on the nation’s behalf. They created martyrs, not least in Hungary, after 1848.
Nationalism, well remember what the great Dr. Samuel Johnson said, "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”. Now patriotism and nationalism are not the same, but nationalism lends itself, lends itself to populist leaders, of the left or of the right. Nationalism, like patriotism, is a good thing, but in the wrong hands can be a bad thing. And if you think Austro-Hungarian Empire overall was a good thing, then nationalism is a bad thing. If you think nationalism is a good thing, then you have to think that the centralization of the Austro-Hungarian State was a bad thing. I’ve just finished this quotation, “portraits on walls, homes spun, were embroidered on samplers, and even haircuts, recollected their example, magnetising new communities of identity. The advent of constitutional rule in 1866, did not diminish nationalism’s appeal. Instead, the new parliaments provided vehicles for its articulation, thus contributing to its spread and potency”. It’s the problem. I always say it, it’s something constantly is applicable in history. You cannot have a little freedom. If you give people an inch, in the old expression, if you give people an inch, they will take a mile. If you take one brick out of a dam, you can’t, because the whole dam will fail. You can’t give a little freedom. The mistake that Gorbachev made. Now, I’m not saying it’s easy to move from one situation to another, except that I’m saying in Austro-Hungary’s case, yes they could. They could have moved to a constitutional federal monarchy, but they chose not to, and the subsequent events simply take place. Now Rady gives examples, of the sort of examples of this rising tide of nationalism. He writes, “In the 1860s, the marketplace at Zagreb, capital of Croatia, previously a gathering place for people from across the Balkans, was made Croat by the insertion of a giant statue of a Croat leader on horseback, a mediaeval dealer. In Prague”, the Czech, well now the Czech Republic, “in Prague, according to monuments to Czech saints, and German heroes, divided the Czech from the German residential quarters”.
So you knew which bit you were in, depending on the statues. “Streets and shops were also sites of belonging. The different national groups displayed their allegiance by where they chose to live and shop. In Hungary, the taverns were differentiated by the alcohol they served, beer for Germans, wine for Hungarians, and cheap brandy for the rest. Even in their camps, the different national groups were reported to be different. The Hungarian becoming melancholy, the Germans talkative, the Romanians violent, and the Ukrainians incoherent. There was nothing to link these people together, and then, you had an an opportunity to choose your nationality. One example is the Hungarian leader Kossuth, K O double S U T H. He had a German mother, and his uncle was a Slovak nationalist, but he was a Hungarian national. So you could choose what you wanted to be. I’m reminded of a story when I was principal of the City Lit Adult Education College in London. We had to fill in government forms, every student, and there’s thousands and thousands of these forms, saying, explaining what nationality we were. Well, nobody had much difficulty. Some people put British, of course, some people put English, some people put Cornish to be awkward, and then we had lots of people from Europe, so people French and German, and then I suddenly came across this huge bulk of papers where they said they were Chinese, and then I realised that this whole group were a group of students with special needs. And I asked the tutor to come down, and I said I had no idea you’d recruited this term all these Chinese students because they could have done from Soho in London.
I said, I didn’t realise you recruited all of these Chinese. And she said, we didn’t. So I said, well, why have I got all these forms saying Chinese? And she said, well, when we discussed the form and how to fill it in, and one of them said, I feel Chinese this morning, and everyone else said so do I, and they all filled in Chinese. But the end of the story is, as principal, I wasn’t allowed to change any of the forms. Into County Hall in London, all the forms go, from County Hall they go into the Ministry of Education, and sometime later, the Secretary of State for Education stood up in the House of Commons, and congratulated the City Lit of having such an input into the Chinese community in London. Nonsense. I’ve never believed any statistics, any government bring forth ever since. But Kossuth chose to be Hungarian. His uncle chose to be Slovak, very strange. And then there’s this story, "one soldier at the beginning of the 20th century, wrote his diary in four languages, German for regimental matters, Slovene when thinking about his girlfriend, Serbian for songs that he recalled, and Hungarian for his sexual fantasies”. Don’t ask. If any of you are Hungarian, you can tell me quietly one to one afterwards, and no one else will hear you. But the point is well made. The point is well made that this is not a country that’s unified. However Vienna wants to impose a German nationalism on all, it can’t. It simply can’t. This is not a late 19th century European state. It’s more like a mediaeval state, more like mediaeval Italy, if you like. It simply can’t go on. But in 1867, the government did in fact act, and that’s a very interesting way that it acted. In 1867, it introduced the arrangement whereby the empire would be split into two, a Austrian half, German dominated, but with significant, Czech Pols for example, significant minority groups, and a Hungarian half, but then also with significant other groups like Ukrainians, Transylvanians, Romanians in other words, as well.
But it was an attempt, at least, to acknowledge that Hungary and Austria were separate nationalities. And it worked and it worked. But why did they do it? Did they do it because they, in their hearts said, this is the right thing to do, said Franz Josef or one of his ministers, we must do this, this is way forward, this is building on the past, we must create a dual monarchy, The Emperor of Austria, the King of Hungary, the same man, K and K as it’s put in the German shorthand for them. K and K, Kaiser and konig, Emperor and king. But the truth is, they didn’t choose to do it to advance democracy, they did it in respect to having lost a war with Prussia. In 1866, Bismarck, Chancellor of Prussia, defeated the Austrians in seven weeks. In seven weeks. He did not incorporate Austria, that is to say any of the German bits westward, he did not incorporate them into Prussia, even though his king, the King of Prussia, Wilhelm I of Prussia, wanted him to annex Austria, that wasn’t his aim. His aim was that Prussia should unite Germany. He didn’t want Austria. Austria was absolutely not in his sight. Why not? Because he said that the East began in Vienna, and last thing he wanted were Hungarians, Transylvanians. That wasn’t Bismark’s dream, he wanted a unified Germany. But by defeating Austria, he put them out of contention. No longer could Austria present itself as the possible unificator of Germany, Bismarck had simply trumped them. And so having been defeated, in a period of only seven weeks, Austria finds itself in trouble.
To start with, it had to hand Venice and Benicia to Italy because the Italians and the Prussians had had an agreement because Italy opened the second front to Austria, in which it performed, surprise, surprise, extremely badly. But Bismarck honoured his promise, and Venice and Benicia were taken away from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and given to Italy as part of the Italian , Italian resurgence, Italian unification. After all, Bismark understood about unification, understood about language and ethnicity for Germany, and he understood it about Italy. He had no intention, he didn’t want Venice, and he certainly didn’t want anything east of Vienna, and he wasn’t bothered about Vienna either. Well, if you can defeat them in seven weeks, it’s hardly a military threat to you, is it? So Austria finds its nose put out of joint, it’s lost Venicia, it had already lost Lombardy a few years before, it’s lost its Italian possessions, and it’s lost the potential leadership of a united Germany. Four years later, Bismarck proclaims a united Germany, and the Prussian King becomes Emperor of Germany, proclaimed as such in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles in France at the end of the Franco Prussian war. Bismark has achieved, do not think of Bismarck as a proto-Wilhelm II, and certainly not a proto-Hitler, he only wanted to create a unified Germany. He didn’t want France, he didn’t want Austria, he just wanted a unified Germany under Prussian control, which is what he achieved by 1871. So Austria gave up looking westward, how could it? There’s now this unified Germany about to come in place in the politics of Europe, so it began to look eastwards. And in order to hold its eastern possessions, it realised that they would have to be ruled from Budapest, and not from Vienna. So it’s no longer called the Austrian Empire, it’s now called the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the emperor is usually referred to, as I said, as K and K, Kaiser and Konig, Kaiser Emperor of Austria, Konig or King of Hungary, and there’s a separate coronation service held in Budapest after a coronation service in Vienna.
There’s only one subsequent emperor and king who is Charles Habsburg, who’s crowned in Vienna and crowned in Budapest. We’ll come to that story much later in this series. You may come across some funny words if you read about it. The Austrian part was also called Cisleithania, C I S L E I T H A N I A, Cisleithania, and the Hungarian part was called Transleithania. Well, the River Leitha was simply a river that they used, it’s a tributary of the Danube, they use its name as the division between Austria and Hungary. I think that’s terribly confusing when books use it, but you don’t need to remember that. What you need to remember is there’s an Austrian part, and a Hungarian part, and on your map there’s a very clear dotted line that shows you where one empire is, and where the other is. It’s sometimes, because it’s emperor and king, called the Jewel Monarchy. So you’ll hear the phrase Jewel Monarchy, Austro-Hungarian Empire, or this dreadful words like, really, I don’t like pronouncing, Cisleithania and Transleithania, oh dear, terrible. But he didn’t solve the problem of nationalism. Why? One, because the Hungarians felt that the Austrians were treating them as second class citizens, they got a chip on their shoulder, 1848 remember they declared independence, they’ve got this massive chip on their shoulder. And secondly, there were many other nationalities in both the Austrian part, and in the Hungarian part. If we look at a census, in many ways, I don’t want to have given the impression, which I may have done, that Austro-Hungary is backward. It did not solve its political problems, its political constitutional issues, true, but in other ways, in terms, for example of education, and in the bureaucracy of Vienna, this is German bureaucracy, you would expect it to be effective, and it was effective.
And in 1911, there’s a census, and that is a very accurate census, and it tells us as regards languages, this is the whole empire, all of it, the Hungarian part, the Austrian part, put it all together. there were 51.4 million in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Then this language, because language was important, over 23%, nearly a quarter, spoke German, 19.5%, in other words 20%, spoke Hungarian. So a fifth of the Austro-Hungarian Empire spoke Hungarian, and a quarter of the Austro-Hungarian Empire spoke German, and then the figures go down. The Czechs were next with 12%, Serbo-Croat 10%, Pols 9%, Ukrainians seven, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenes, Italians and others, Italians were now down to 1.5%, which is in Austria itself in the Tyrol. What about Jews? Now Jews are quite interesting, in terms of how they were dealt with in the census. Roughly 5% of the population of 51.4 million were Jewish. But they weren’t equally spread, as you well know, across the empire. But in Austria, they were categorised as German speakers because most of them, I think the Jews in Vienna are a highly cultured group, a middle class elite in business, in intellectual life and so on, and spoke German. I mean, of course they spoke Yiddish as well, but they spoke German. So they weren’t recorded as speaking Yiddish, but recorded as speaking German. In Hungary, where there were more Yiddish speakers, and non-Hungarian speakers, they were recorded as Hungarian if they spoke Hungarian, but if they were Yiddish speakers, wait for it, they were designated as speaking German. Now don’t ask, there is no logic. I’m just telling you how they dealt with the census of the Jews. The 1911 census also looked at religion. Take the Austrian part, 91% of all Austrians were Catholic, nearly 5% of the Austrian population were Jewish.
The Hungarian part, 62% were Hungarian, and interestingly, nearly 5% were Jewish. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the largest religion was Orthodoxy, Serb Orthodoxy which was 43.5%, followed by Muslims in Bosnia 33%, and Jews 0.6%. Now reading out religion, I mentioned Austria, I mentioned Hungary, but I also mentioned Bosnia Herzegovina. And I’ve got to tell you a little bit of the story of that. The Habsburgs acquired Bosnia Herzegovina in 1878 at the Congress of Berlin, but they didn’t acquire it as the sovereign power. A very odd arrangement was made at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The Congress of Berlin said that Austria could occupy it with military soldiers, could administer Bosnia Herzegovina, but technically Bosnia Herzegovina remained part of the Ottoman Empire. Nonsense. But it was the compromise reached in Berlin, negotiated largely by Bismark and Disraeli. Now then, once the Habsburgs got hold of Bosnia Herzegovina is it a bad story? No, it is not a bad story. They already held Dalmatia, that is to say the Croatian coast, places like Zadar, places like Dubrovnik, are all part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a very nice place, lots of Austro-Hungarians went to holidays there. If you had family who were in Vienna, for example, your family might well have gone to Dalmatia in the mid 19th century for a holiday. They might even have owned property there. So the Austrians are not anti the Bosnians at all, but they have a problem because Croatian bit, the Dalmatia bit, is full of Croats, and that doesn’t cause them a problem. The Croats are Catholic, the Bosnians are Orthodox or Muslim, and that does cause them a problem. Why? Because Serbia, independent Serbia, is pushing wherever it can to create a south Slav kingdom. They are to achieve it after the end of World War I, Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia means simply the country of the south Slavs. And that’s what the people at Berlin wanted to avoid because Serbia is in the pocket of Russia, Orthodox Russia. One of the reasons that Putin wants Kiev because it was the centre of Orthodox Christianity in Russia, it’s where Christianity arrived in Russia. So in the 1870s, they don’t want Serbia to have Bosnia, even though Serbs live in Bosnia, Bosnia Serbs who are Orthodox, and so the compromise was a good European power that we can trust, Vienna, will run it, but the Ottoman Empire technically still rules it. Well, that sounds like a very typically British compromise, which makes no sense, but it worked. The Austrians decided, very cleverly, that they would not incorporate Bosnia Herzegovina into either Austria or Hungary, but they would administer it by both of them. So it becomes a condominium, that is to say a country that is ruled by two other states. Think of the Sudan later in the 19th century, which is ruled by both Egypt and Britain, a condominium. And so Bosnia Herzegovina was ruled by Austria and Hungary. So there was no, it didn’t provide a point of dispute between Austria-Hungary because they’d resolved it, and they brought all sorts of benefits to Bosnia Herzegovina, not least education, and they wanted to fight the idea of Serb nationalism, this idea of south Yugoslavia by saying, well, they wanted to emphasise being Bosnian was important. But in 1903, an anti-Austrian government took power in Serbia. And in 1908, Austria-Hungary felt that Serbia might move in on Bosnia Herzegovina. Why?
Because there had been a revolution in Constantinople. So without reference to anyone, Austria announced that Bosnia Herzegovina was now annexed to Austria-Hungary, and France, and Germany, and Britain had to accept it because they don’t want Russia to start interfering. In 1910, Franz Josef produced a constitution for Bosnia. You see, the Austria-Hungarians are so, they’re so annoying in hindsight, they could have done so much, they could have done so much more, but they didn’t. But Bosnia is administered quite separately, has a constitution in 1910, but it added to increased Serb nationalism. Many Serbs living in Bosnia are being enticed by the Serbs in Serbia to join them. You don’t really need these Germans, these Hungarians, you’re Serbs, your Orthodox stand up against them, and that problem doesn’t go away, as I shall say, in about two minutes time. So if we take a date like 1913, the year before war, we can say there are a number of nationalist problems being faced by Austria. There’s the south Slav problem in Bosnia, which arguably is the biggest, there’s German nationalism, which is deeply resented by non-Germans outside of Austria, there’s Hungarian nationalism, deeply resented by Romanians and Ukrainians, there’s Czech nationalism, and there’s Polish nationalism. Now the Czech nationalism is the important one because since 1848, there have been Czech nationalist parties. And the Czech saw themselves as capable of creating an independent Czech Republic with or without Slovakia. As it happens after World War I, the two were put together as Czechoslovakia, an unhappy marriage, which eventually splits apart with the fall of communism leaving Slovakia as the poorer of the two communities. The Pols are in Galicia. Now they have a different policy. The Czechs want an independence, they want out.
Now 50 years before, they might have been happy with a federal state, that is going to disappear in World War I, and they’re focused on an independent Czech Republic or Czechoslovakia. The Pols are different because other parts of Poland are ruled by Prussia, Germany, or by Russia, and the Pols who live in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Galicia, realise they are better off under the Austro-Hungarians, than their compatriots are under the Russians or Germans. And so they develop a policy which is called agreements, a policy of compromise, if you like. They don’t want want the repressive policies of Russia or Germany. They don’t really want anything to do with those Pols, so they negotiate directly with the monarchy, and present themselves as terribly loyal, but please sir, can we speak Polish? Can we teach Polish in our schools? Can the University of Krakow teach in Polish? And the Habsburg Monarchy says yes, it says yes. And in fact, in terms of Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Pols produce two Prime Ministers, and a Foreign Minister before the war in 1914. The Pols wanted independence, but they couldn’t see their way to get it. Post 1918, of course, is a different story, and Poland is created. So there are different issues with the different groups, and Vienna deals piecemeal, as does Budapest. There there isn’t a coherence about their policy.
Now the heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, is seen by many as liberal, and constitutional, and with answers, but the ageing Franz Josef doesn’t want to know, simply doesn’t want to know. It’s like the question you must never ask the queen if you lunch a Buckingham Palace, do you think Charles will make a good king? That’s a no-no question. And it was a no-no question to Franz Josef, or comment to make, well the heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, believes this is what we should, he doesn’t want to know. And I suppose it’s typical of older leaders, they either go one way or the other. Either they want to change everything before they die, or they want everything to remain the same, and Franz Josef is in the second camp, everything must remain the same. But we know that Franz Josef dies in 1916, if only, if only he died in 1910, if only he died in 1910, it is conceivable that we could have avoided war in 1914, but we don’t. And I will finish with the biography by John Van der Kiste of Emperor Franz Josef, and we’re going in June 1914, and taking you to Sarajevo, “drawing a loaded pistol from his pocket, Gavrilo Princip stepped into the street and fired twice. The police reached him just as he was about to turn the gun on himself. As the chauffeur turned the second car around, the thin stream of blood spurted from Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s mouth, his wife Sophie cried out, 'in God’s name, what’s happened to you?’ She then collapsed between his knees. Count Franz von Harrach thought she’d fainted from fear, and only later did he see that she also had been shot.
She died almost at once. Franz Ferdinand made a valiant effort to prevent her from falling, entreating her to live for the sake of their children. Muttering feebly he said ‘it’s nothing’ several times, but he began to lose consciousness and slumped forward. By the times the cars reached the governor’s residence, Franz Ferdinand was dead as well”. The imperial visit by the heir to the throne and his wife to Bosnia had ended in a Serbian Croat killing him. And from there all the dominoes fall. And by August 1914, we in Britain find ourselves at war with Germany, and with Austria-Hungary. We find ourselves in alliance with France, and with Russia, and that’s a story I’m going to tell from the Austria-Hungarian point of view, the World War I story. But for now, I’ll finish with that tragic event that change European, and world history forever. Thanks very much for listening. There may be some people who’ve got stories to tell. Some of you have told me most fantastic stories of your own families, and some of you may have questions, which I may or may not be able to answer.
Q&A and Comments:
Q: Now the first question is from Peter Page, I’m going to draw a bit closer ‘cause I was told not to lean forward, but I can’t read. Problem of being elderly, I can’t see. “I have just started reading Edward Gibbon’s, the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, unlike any historian I have read and I find impressive. Have you read it?“
A: Yes.
Q: "And if yes, what is your opinion of his point of view?”
A: Well that’s a bit off centre, Peter, from what we’re talking about. No, Gibbon is beautiful to read. I’m afraid history has moved on considerably since then. So it’s a classic, but it’s a classic that you have to read with the knowledge that we have in 2022 about the Roman Empire. It’s not quite as Gibbon says, it doesn’t detract from the work, and it’s beautifully written, but it’s, no longer would you use it to teach people about the end of the Roman Empire.
Q: “If there’d been a federal state, do you think there would’ve been ethnic cleansing in the provinces?”
A: Oh, what a very good question that is from Michael, “in order to strengthen provincial languages”. Well, gosh, yes I think there would, I think there might well have been. That’s a very good question, and a good shot below, below the water line of my ship. I think that’s a good question, and there’s no easy answer to that, and you may well be right.
Q: Leon says, “please explain the comparison if the Ukrainian in the Austrian Empire still consider himself Ukrainian, then why should not a Celt afford himself a Brit rather than keep Romano Sussex?
A: Because as Tacitus tells us, the British rather like hot baths and good food. And he said they were, Tacitus says, and his father-in-law Agricola served as governor in Britain, says that the British simply like the luxury of Rome, and they didn’t bother, they abandoned their Celtic side for this other rather better life, really. It’s like taking someone, I don’t know, I’m gone bit difficult to say, but it’s like taking someone from the north of England, and planting them in Florida. There’s no good saying, well, do you think yourself British, they’ve taken American citizen, no, I’m American. In fact, that’s not a bad example. I have a friend who was born in Britain, still retains British nationality, but also has American nationality. He’s been a professor at Princeton for years. And if you ask him does he feel American, yes he does, but he says "when he comes to Britain, he feels British again”. He said, “it’s very strange”. He said, “as soon I get off the plane at Heathrow, I’m British, but as soon as I get off the plane in New York, I’m American”. So it’s a difficult question, but they didn’t think of themselves as British, no they didn’t, they saw to themselves as Roman.
Oh, patriotism. Oh, sorry, Betty. Oh, thank you Martin. Martin’s answered the question. It’s the quotation of Dr. Samuel Johnson, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”, yes, it is. That’s what Johnson said. It’s in his great dictionary of the English language.
Oh, well done. Adrienne said, I didn’t know that, Rady’s book on the Habsburgs were available in paperback at the beginning of March, 12 pound 99 in English, it would be available all over in the world as well. I think it’s an extremely good book. I think it now replaces earlier books.
David said, “as a Canadian we must have been lucky that our original leader believed in a federal monarchy, which has lasted 155 years despite having two founding peoples, the English and the French”. Well, yes, Canada is a very interesting story. But you remember that many French left America at the time of the American War of Independence, and went to Canada. And when they reached Canada, the Catholic Church told the French, now Canadian French, and boosted the numbers very largely, said to them, “better King George”, the quotation is, “Better King George than those damn Yankees”. And that’s why they supported the British because they might not like the British, I’m sure they didn’t, but the alternative was government by damn Yankees, and it was the religion that got them, and that’s why they kept, and plus the fact that the British government, well the Canadians will say, may say differently on French Canadians, but in the main found a way of living together. And remember that Canada is not a federal state, but a confederate state, and so that’s interesting as well. Oh, I feel Chinese are so much ignorance in the educational system, glad it isn’t only in the US. Yeah, but they were students with special needs, and according to the philosophy of the day, if there was a questionnaire to be filled in, then they would be treated as adults with perfectly normal adults, and if they chose to believe they were Chinese, then you could not stop it. In fact, I was prevented as principal from changing any form. Americans may like this example, when people had to say, you also had to say what colour you were, were you white British, black British, brown British and so on, and he was American. And he crossed everything out, said black American, white American, Asian American, Japanese American, he crossed it all out, and put red because he had some Sioux blood in him. And I thought that was a fantastic answer. God knows how the Ministry of Education’s computer was able to cope with someone describing himself as Red American. He was such a lovely man as well. I felt that was right response.
Q: There was a link with Catholicism in the majority of population question mark?
A: Yes, there is. The majority of the population, I gave the figures, I’ve lost my bit of paper now, but yes. Yes, Catholicism was strong across the empire, and of course it’s their Catholicism versus Prussia’s Protestantism, which many argue is the reason that it wasn’t Bavaria Catholic and Austria, that unified Germany, but Protestant Prussia, that’s another talk for another day, and there’s a lot of truth in that.
Q: On the subject how you identify yourself today is a bigger issue nationality in terms of race, cultural, religion, gender, political affiliation and so on. Has society become more complex?
A: I suppose one answer it’s become more woke. I don’t know if this has been reported outside Britain, but the Times had an article today where the leading German book, dictionary on the use of German, how you use German, says that the word Jew is anti-Semitic, and you should use words like a person of the Jewish faith. So I wrote an email to Trudy and said, I think we live in a mad world, do you agree? And perhaps I should address you as a person of the Jewish faith, He stroke, sorry, she stroke her. But I’m sure you’ve got all of that in other countries, It’s she/her, he/his, and it you go mad. One of the interesting things in Britain is that black, not Asian, oh yeah, Asian and black often describe themselves not as English, or Scottish, but as British Asian and British black. And that’s because of the forms that they fill in when they get citizenship. Whereas most people in England and Scotland would describe themselves as English or Scottish rather than British. Now we used to describe ourselves as British when I was a child, that would’ve been the normal way. But because of the cracks in the United Kingdom, people didn’t describe themselves like that.
Q: What caused the war of 1866?
A: A made up reason, Bismarck simply wants a war to make sure Austria doesn’t interfere in his plans for the unification of Germany, exactly the same as he’d had a war against Denmark, and as he’s going to have a war against France. He’s the archetypal politic, and my goodness, may I give anything to have Bismark as Prime Minister. He was devious, but he was devious for the right reasons, and he was successful in what he wanted to achieve. He is not Wilhelm II, and he is absolutely not Hitler, remember. Bismark’s an interesting person.
No, no. Palmerson’s comment was not about Bosnia Herzegovina, the comment is made about Frederich Holstein, not about Bosnia Herzegovina.
Oh, that’s a very good, Jonathan, a very good suggestion. “A Nervous Splendour” by Frederic Morton is an excellent portrait of Austria, and the disintegration of the empire.
Q: Oh, what was the role of Roma in Austria and Hungary?
A: The same as across all of Europe. They are, they’re persecuted basically, aren’t they, right across Europe. They’re treated badly, they live very much on the fringes of society in Britain as well as anywhere else. Take Britain because it’s the great democracy of the 19th century. Yes, appallingly badly treated. The Hungarians always want grandeur and exaggerate, and they have permanent chip on their shoulders. I’m part Hungarian, actually Austro-Hungarian says some, Ellie. Well yes, but there’s something very attractive about Hungarians. Well, Sissi certainly found it because she fell for all these Hungarian calvary officers in extremely colourful, and extremely tight cavalry trousers. And yeah, I mean, yes, Hungary is absolutely fascinating, and they do like grandeur. You can go into the churches and you can see that. But the Congress in 1878, was to put right a treaty which the Russians had imposed slightly earlier at San Stefano, and it was to make sure that Europe came together, and made the decisions to the whole of Europe, exactly what we’re trying to do now with Putin, and the Ukraine.
Oh, thank you so much Ellie. Hungarian Jews do not generally speak Yiddish, they looked down on it, spoke German and or French. French is interesting because the Romanians were the great French speakers. And it depends, it depends on class as well. I’m half Hungarian, my father spoke German, only Hungarian at school, the family didn’t speak Yiddish.
Q: How did Bosnia Herzegovina acquire such a large proportion of Muslims?
A: Because it was in the Ottoman Empire. No, not Turkish immigrants, converts to Islam from the Middle Ages onwards.
And somebody’s answered, Steven, I dunno why I bothered to come and answer the questions, you do much better answering them yourselves.
Oh that Ellie says, the Germans are world-class bureaucrats, and hampered by their attention to detail. My daughter in Berlin despairs often. Well, yes, and you could argue that that stereotype of a German is one of the issues with the Austrian empire, and it certainly applies to Franz Josef himself, who read everything, even in late age, and it was ridiculous. He was unable to delegate.
Q: Why is the Kaiser seen as the villain, and Franz Josef is not?
A: I do that when I come to talk about Austrian, and World War I. Very briefly, Franz Josef went, Franz Josef sent a well, Franz Josef declares war on Austria, but the Germans were itching for war, and the Kaiser is the, yeah, that’s a long question, longer question to answer. I won’t do that.
Q: Do I think Charles will make a good king?
A: There’s an earlier question to that, Judith.
Q: Do you think Charles will become king question?
A: One doesn’t know, I can’t answer anything about the British monarchy, I don’t know what’s going to happen. There isn’t, the Habsburgs dealt with people like Andrew, They simply as it were, refused ever to refer. They had a member of the family who went, it was called the Red Archduke, they just simply ignored him. He had everything taken away from him, money, position, everything, and banished, and they don’t mention the war, don’t mention the name, and that’s maybe what Charles will do when mommy dies.
Yes, this is a good point by Irene. Irene, Kent. When Woodrow Wilson was influential at Versailles after the first World War, why didn’t he see that these ideas of nationalism, which he saw as leading to self-determination, when taken to extremes, caused enormous difficulties. You always have to remember with Woodrow Wilson, that he was an academic, and academics don’t necessarily make the best politicians. And indeed, you remember that his great idea of the League of Nations was not accepted when he went back to America. He couldn’t even carry his own country with him. I would say that Woodrow Wilson was too idealistic. My Princeton friend, because of course that’s where Woodrow Wilson came from, said that his view was that he was just too academic, too good for the job. Right, Holland, you’re asking lots of questions like World War I, I’m trying to focus on what you are asking, Franz Josef… how could World War I have been avoided had Franz Josef died in 1910. It would’ve been avoided because the Habsburg coming to power, that is to say either Franz Ferdinand or Charles, would have struck, would have been very much geared to Western Europe, that is to say to France and Britain, and they would have sought diplomatic answers, not military answers. They would’ve sought also to increase constitutionality across the empire, and I will say more of that when we come to Charles.
Thanks. Okay, well thank you for listening. So thank you for listening.
Oh, somebody said, Nicholas says, I had a letter from St. Paul School, which is in London, signed Edgar, whatever the name was he stroke him. I find this very strange. I’m sorry, I’m too old-fashioned for the she/her, he/him bit they/there is the one, isn’t it as well you’re meant to say. Yes, we’re going to talk about wokeism. Trudy and I are going to have a go on Monday the 14th of February after I’ve done this talk, we’re going to do a talk, we’re going to have a discussion between ourselves, bring you in about wokeism. Somebody’s put here the lambasting of Katie Clancy is a real travesty. Oh, all of it is. Ukrainian Jews spoke Yiddish says David. Thank you. Jennifer says, oh, well thank you. I think that’s probably where I will stop this evening if that’s okay.
[Judi] Thank you, William. And we will see everybody later. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
[Judi] Take care, bye-bye everyone.
Bye-bye, bye-bye.