sign in sign up
<<
Home , 1860s, Bad Ischl, Charles III of Spain, Napoleon III

10.3726/82040_149

Today’s Traces of Maximilian, the Habsburg – in , even in and the Southwest – German Studies in the International Set of Connections

By Peter Pabisch, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

The following study uncovers details of German Studies in a Latin-American setting which have fascinated several generations of researchers even though the topic has never gained central stage attention in the field. Rather it presents itself as an ideal example of interdisciplinary studies in post-modern ways of overcoming narrow national opinions, yet by keeping a focal point as to the subject matter. The other focal point sheds light on multiple features of international transatlantic historical phenomena which have been dominated by national interests and viewpoints as well. The walls surrounding these special interests have to come down though, in order to portray the literary and historical scene in its mutually supporting totality. Maximilian, Archduke of , 1832 to 1867, assumed the - ship of Mexico during the last three years of his short life. The Mexican people had invited him to be their emperor, as the so-called Treaty of Miramar1 claims legally. The question arises immediately who the representatives of the Mexi- can people were and what authority they carried with them. The answer has been given in many historical and fictitious accounts, and German /Austrian research reflects only some of the outcome, a flaw to be remedied in further scholarly work. The topic has regained great popularity in recent years, as shown in films, exhibits, talks and other presentations. From today’s point of view the emperorship was a scam, adorned by stately etiquette and authoritar- ian legality. At the time between 1860–70, Benito Juarez had been elected , opting for a state modeled after the of America – where was president. The representatives of the people of Mexico appearing in Italy to invite Maximilian to be their emperor were archconservatives and opposed to Juarez. They were interested in getting their former land back that had been confiscated by the liberal forces in the state and distributed among the people. Three aspects are to be illuminated here to characterize further the complex political situation before and the development after this treaty was signed which constitutes the first two points. They serve as a background to the third point pertaining to the question: Which cultural traces are there left of the second , also in regards to New Mexico and the Southwest of the United

1 Treaty of Miramar, signed in Trieste, Italy, on April 10, 1864.

149 States, a vast region that tended more to its Latin American roots and felt the Anglo, let alone the Austrian history to be alienating its own background? It considers further that Mexico, after the lost Mexican-American war of 1846– 48, still had a strong cultural, even political influence on her former northern territories, namely on all the U. S. states that were to become the Southwestern states of the United States – with New Mexico and its capital Santa Fe, as the most northern official administrative center in all of before 1848, namely since 1610. To this day cultural features in religious rites, in family life and in folkloristic traditions, such as popular music, have preserved their affiliation with Mexico. No military and political border control between Mexico and the United States has been able to disrupt this cultural bond effectively. This study will cover some exemplary key features as they have been illuminated only from certain special angles, thereby leaving out many sources, e. g. certain German and, independently, Austrian connections, even though the German and Austrian side has shown greatest interest in the topic in many ways such as in literature, history and political science. Among recent research of the first decade of the 21st century the following statement reiterates the relative importance of this short era in the 1860s:

Los años del Imperio están firmemente insertos en la historia de México. […] Sin embargo, el Imperio también amerita un studio particular.2 (The years of the Empire are firmly anchored into the . […]. Without any doubt, the Empire merits to be studied also in particular).

This startling, maybe unexpected claim is made by Mexican historian Erika Pani as recent as in the year 2004, when she gives many reasons for it in her collective study “Segundo Imperio”, here under the chapter heading of “El Imperio Como Momento Excepcional” (The Empire as a unique episode). Understandably it is not so much the illustrious appearance of the imperial couple Ferdinand Maximilian of Habsburg-Lorraign and Charlotta of in Mexico, but rather the circumstances they found themselves in and were involved with, that made their brief reign to a questionable throne of Mexico rather noteworthy. The view of world history on the one hand, and the concern to present objective history in the sense of the German nineteenth century historian Leopold von Ranke3 on the other, are earnestly challenged here, because what

2 Erika Pani. Segundo Imperio, p. 114. 3 Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), as professor of history at the University of , favored objective historical writing based on clear evidence. Yet, almost one century earlier enlightened historians, such as the German author Friedrich Schiller who taught history at the University of Jena, coined the term “Universalgeschichte” – universal history, thereby comparing it favorably to nationally confined historical research.

150 one finds in fact and fiction is lopsided, more often than not, by nationalistic and narrow accounts of various kinds. Such lopsided views either can invite to emphasize only the fastidious Habsburg family and the fate of this phenom- enal house, that ruled parts of the world for over six centuries – and in an empire in which the sun did not set at times. Furthermore the history of the ‘Grande Nation’ got into the habit of imprinting her power upon world affairs – at least from Louis XIV to III. The latter manipulated the of his era, so that Ferdinand Max, for reasons of his own, was placed willy-nilly on the throne of Mexico. Even Great Britain under her popular still had an axe to grind with America, not only because of the lost colonies, but more recently relative to the nineteenth century, up to Maximilian’s time – in memory of various lost wars against the United States. The Mexican-American war and other wars, such as the famous one at the Alamo against Texas in 1836 – although won by the Mexicans, were costly and retribution was sought from Mexico by British and other European forces, which had supported Mexico for their own interests against an independent United States, whenever it seemed probable and opportune.

As far as North-American history is concerned the U. S. public hears, more often than not, about all the east – west history from Pocahontas, to the Pilgrim Fathers, to the era of Route 66, ending in Hollywood – and back. Except for the battle at the Alamo and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo twelve years thereafter, students are less eminently alerted to the might of U. S. American South-North history and to the equality its contents should enjoy from the days of the ‘conquistadores’, whose overlords across the Atlantic in were the Habsburgs for over two centuries. To be exact, the Habsburgs were players in American affairs from 1493, when Maximlian I, a famous forebear of Maximilian of Mexico, married Mary of Burgundy and thereby added the Spanish realm and the New World of the to his domain. This was the Habsburgs’ until 1700, when the last Spanish Habsburg II died. In the pursuing Spanish Succession War from 1703 to 1713 the ‘Casa d’Austria’, thus the other half of the Habsburg family, insisted on the inherit- ance of that throne. Louis XIV, the sun king of France, interpreted the affair differently by trying to prove, not without justification, that his mother, Maria Anna of Austria, and his then deceased wife Marie-Thérèse of Austria, daugh- ter of Spanish king Philip IV, were also Habsburgs, and thus he and his family, being also close neighbors, had the actual right to rule over . He won the more than a decade long war and sent his grandson Philip V to continue the rule, marking though the beginning of the Bourbon era in Spain in sequence to the Philips of the Spanish Habsburgs, from Maximlian I’s son Philip I, the Fair, to his famous great-grandson Philip II, the builder of the Escorial in , yet the loser against Elizabeth I with his Armada (1588). He was followed by Philip III and IV who reigned with the above mentioned Charles II

151 during the ‘Siglio d’Oro’, the great century of Spanish culture and literature – later to be translated into German by prominent German Austrian writers – despite the fading might of Spain on the world seas vis-à-vis Britain and, albeit less impressively, France. The greatest Habsburg in this overview certainly was Charles V (1500 to 1558), whom the Spanish and Latin-American historians refer to, mostly, as Carlos I, King of Spain. The Duchy of , from whence Mary of Burgundy, his grandmother and wife of Maximilian I originated, considered him as Charles II, yet the Germans as well as the Holy Roman Empire counted him as Charles V. During the Spanish Succession War his direct Austrian relative in the fifth generation wanted to become Charles III of Spain, yet when the war was lost he changed to Charles VI, selecting each time the famous Charles I or V as his forebear. Charles VI was the father of no less famous Maria Theresia (sic) whose Spanish perspective meets not just the historian’s eye, but bears a heavier meaning, because the significance of the eighteenth century for the Austrian Habsburgs remained in their abidance by Spanish court rules. Throughout most of the eighteenth century, when appearing for an audience at the court in , Austrian citizens had to dress in Spanish mantilla and décor. Even Maria Theresia’s monument between the of Art History and the Museum of Natural History on the glorious ‘Ring-Straße’ in Vienna, sculpted about a century after her death, shows her entirely in Spanish attire and reminds one of the religious regalia of the ‘Conquistadora’. This type of depiction comes close to that of Mary, mother of Jesus, and can be found in various late baroque churches throughout the Spanish world and present day Austria. Only Charles VI’s enlightened grandson Joseph II, who died in 1790, did away with the outdated Spanish etiquette, much to the relief of the Austrian people. The powerful Spanish element in the Habsburg tradition is all too often overlooked when discussing the ideas of Ferdinand Maximilian, as Maximilian of Mexico was called by his full name. The fact that Charlotta, his beautiful wife, came from Belgium, an area that was part of the Lowlands in which Charles V and Philip II were the main rulers for a long time too, puts even more weight on the young emperor’s Maximilian erroneous views of justify- ing his assumption to the Mexican throne. No doubt though, Charles V, or I, united the largest empire of the Habsburgs in the world, so that the already mentioned insistence that in Charles V’s empire the sun did not set, was only adopted by the a century after his reign for similar motives but different reasons. Even though he divided his empire into the House of Spain and the Casa d’Austria between his son Philip II and his brother Ferdinand in Austria toward the end of his reign in the early 1550s, during his lifetime particularly Latin-America cov-

152 ered also all of Southwestern North-America. Thus it felt the raids of his troops to find gold and silver for him, so that he could finance his global wars. Coronado, for example, who came up the Rio Grande Valley around the year 1540 was one of his officers, let alone Cortez in 1519 in Mexico and Pizarro in 1532 in Peru who preceded Coronado in Mexico and . The family never forgot this vestige, which had a more peaceful resem- blance in the Catholic missions that were established in the Americas during the Habsburg era. In New Mexico various 17th century ruins (Abo, Quarai of Nuestra Señora de la Purisima Concepción, etc.) and still existing mission churches founded in the 1600s (Acoma, Ranchos de Taos, etc.) are reflecting this trend.4 Thus the Habsburgs’ royal or real roads or ‘caminos reales’ spanned over all of Latin-America and had one major artery from Mexico City to Santa Fe in Nuevo Mexico. This state by itself was much larger than today since the late sixteenth century, in connection with the establishment of its capital Santa Fe in 1610, the most northern official Spanish-Habsburg administrative settle- ment in Latin America, and it included under its name most of today’s Southwestern States.5 Despite political changes especially New Mexico can be deemed culturally part of Latin-America to the present, although some U. S. American historians will consider this statement as heretic. If we extended this statement to all Hispanic lands of the Southwestern United States, the Anglo Saxon predominance would appear to shrink considerably, even to disappear before the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1821 Spain, which had ruled since 1519, and after the Habsburgs through the since 1700 (or 1713 respectively)6, was ousted from Mexico and soon from all of Latin-America, together with Portugal, France and Great Britain. Besides these royal houses’ ruthless daily politics at times, they caused, early on in the , to promote Mexican culture and knowledge to international standards, which carried over into the days of

4 In his historical novel “Caesar of Santa Fe” (Albuquerque: Amador Press, 1990) University of New Mexico professor emeritus of Spanish Tim MacCurdy (1916–2010) points out very clearly the relative independence of the Catholic Franciscan missions from state govern- ment. Thereby he underlines the fact that the cultural heritage preserved to the present time, is more an achievement of religious social work than of secular circles of Spanish leader- ship. 5 Reference: “Maps of North America: The Unveiling of Our Continent”, by Ashley and Miles Baynton-Williams. : Quercus Publishing, 2008. Especially the maps of 1614, 1620, 1625, 1689, 1710, 1718, 1720, especially 1762, 1848 and 1855. 6 Spanish Succession War, 1703–1713, not only aimed to return the Spanish Habsburg throne to the house of Austria under Charles III, but also to exclude French influence from America which was in the interest of Britain, represented by Wiston Churchill’s forebear the Duke of Marlborough. This attempt failed against Louis XIV, and could not be averted until Napoleon I.

153 the . The New Mexican university professor and Spanish-American author Sabine Ulibarrí7, now deceased, once declared emphatically that in Mexico they already had built architecturally world famous cathedrals, castles and urban settlements, when in the United States they still smeared log-huts with mud and wood, that had to be hauled over dirt-roads. He was referring to the early years of Abe Lincoln in Illinois, who was to play a decisive role in the fate of Max, the emperor, by refusing to accept, even to consider his claim to a Mexican throne. Sabine Ulibarrí knowingly and, thus, satirically omitted to mention that on the east coast of the United States several of Washington

D. C.’s neoclassical government buildings were already erected at that time. More importantly, Abe Lincoln urged Napoleon III to retreat from Mexico with his French soldiers, which they did in 1866, shortly after Lincoln’s murder, thereby leaving behind naive Ferdinand Max, who refused to give up his throne, so that he could have returned to Europe alive. From the account about the Habsburg history above, one can sense that family history played an important role in Maxen’s decision to assume and tragically to try and retain the throne of Mexico with his own small forces. All these details create an exciting cloth of interwoven world events and single experiences of the personalities involved in this transatlantic era that outweigh some one-sided views mentioned above. Erika Pani alludes to the problem when she states in her volume about the conference of 2004 on this topic referring to an earlier such conference:

Ya en 1962 se convocó a historiadores franceses y mexicanos a analizar el Imperio en sí – produciéndose un volumen, desigual como tantos trabajos colectivos, pero que se acerca a los distintos aspectos – politicos, económicos, sociales y culturales – del regimen imperial. Éste es, en muchos aspectos, un régimen excepcional. (p. 114/115). (Already in 1962, a meeting of French and Mexican historians was summoned to analyze this (Mexican) empire in itself – producing a volume unequal to any such collective work, but it proved the distinctive political, economic, social and cultural aspects of this imperial regiment).

The question arises immediately why in both conferences only French and Mexican historians were invited and why no German specialist, let alone any Austrian expert was included or had come even uninvited. In this vein also Pani’s study leaves out important German literature of her subject, such as Storch’s8

7 Sabine Ulibarrí (1919–2003), Professor of Spanish and Chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of New Mexico around 1980 and born in Tierra Amarilla of Northern New Mexico, was a strong defender of the importance of the United States’ North-South history. 8 Arthur Storch, 1868.

154 ‘History of Mexico’ in three volumes, or the five volumes of the so called “Muenchmeyer-novel” by Karl May, three volumes of which on “Juarez”, “Trapper Geierschnabel” and “Der sterbende Kaiser” (The Dying Emperor),9 all written shortly after Maximilian’s demise. After publishing the results of her conference a first time, Pani was forced to edit a second and revised edition of her book, because she had listed no German or Austrian historian in her bibliography. At least in this second edition she tried to correct her previous omissions, though the German sources she lists in her otherwise detailed book edition are not without spelling mistakes, so that one has to suspect that she only listed, but did not study these works to make up for her omissions. On the positive side, her given study is most informative, but the entire subject matter would require the assistance of historians who had solid reading knowledge of the main languages involved here – Spanish and French also English and German, and even Italian. Ferdinand Maximilian not only spoke all these languages fluently, but had been also Governor of and Venetia for Austria for some years until 1859. As it is well known, the entire era initiates the global development preceding the 20th and 21st centuries. Due to the considerably faster interna- tional ship traffic, using the invention of the ship’s turbine (invented by the Austrian engineer Joseph Ressel and further developed by the Swede John Jacobson), and the beginning importance of the steam powered trains the possibility to hold together large regions and to communicate between them, such as over the Trans-Atlantic realm, was conceivable, even relatively easy. Napoleon III had such visions for France in trying to display a new role across the Atlantic by realigning with formerly lost French groups on the side of the Confederates during the Civil War in the United States and friendly groups among the conservatives of Mexico. Whereas these political ramifications have been researched often and at length, it has not been mentioned in the same detail that France and Austria had much in common on the personal side of the ruling families. So it is to no surprise that despite the reservations, if not the opposition Maximilian’s older brother Francis Joseph I, the emperor of Austria, maintained to the so called Mexican adventure, that their Bavarian mother Sophie was most active to uphold and to further it. References have it that Maximilian might be the son of Sophie and Napoleon II, the Archduke of Reichsstadt, and son of Napoleon I and Marie- Louise of Austria. Sophie looked after the Archduke in his last two years of his short life (1811–1832). This claim, although persistent, has never been proven,

9 The Muechmeyer-Novel “Das Waldroeschen,” in five parts, start with the first novel re- ferring to Spain “Schloss Rodriganda,” the second beginning with the Mexico reference “Die Pyramide des Sonnengottes” and follwed by the three works mentioned above. In the last volume the fate of all the main players in this episode is summarized at the end.

155 as Markus Habsburg-Lorraign, manager of the in Bad Ischl and descendent of the famous family, once pointed out.10 Yet, the story helps to fathom one of the reasons for the closeness of Napoleon III, three years the Archduke of Reichsstadt’s senior and his cousin to the Habsburgs, as well as his favored choice for Max as the emperor of Mexico. Due to his favorable appearance and behavior, his sense of humor and his knowledge of languages Max always was the first choice for this position besides a few other nobles of the rather inbred European scene on this level. For a while during that time, and still very young, his talent, yet more so his high-powered connections had Maximilian serve as the successful admiral of the Austrian Navy11, before he undertook his Mexican adventure, as it has been labeled repeatedly. What has remained of this episode into our days? The results are some- what overwhelming, considering that public attention has been irregular but is not so slim, and the corresponding bibliography is so extensive. There is a community of scholars and lay persons12 who show this interest in waves; it comes and goes, but never seizes to involve somebody on either side of the Atlantic, to bring up the issue again and again, thereby uncovering ever new aspects. As recent as 2008 even the University of New Mexico in Albquerque, at Zimmerman Library had an exhibit, announced on a small colored poster with the title: “The President, the , and the People”, depicting a face in front of a flag, half French and half Mexican. The face showed one half of Benito Juarez and the other of Maximilian, melted together in a grotesque, yet fitting way. This exhibit, as inventive and thoughtful as it undoubtedly was, followed rather Erika Pani’s omission of the Austrian and most other Euro- pean influences. Thus it restricted itself and stuck to the Mexican – French confrontation entirely.13 Before going into the larger evidence of residual influence of “the emperor of Mexico” to this day, the question has to be addressed: Who was this man?

10 I would like to thank Markus Habsburg-Lorraign for the guided tour he gave me through the Villa and through the city of Bad Ischl in 2006. He also showed me pictures and memora- bilia of the time in the and when Spohie’s four sons would play together in Bad Ischl, taken well care of by their mother. 11 Austrian Navy – see the chapter by Christoph Laucht: “Von Kakanien nach Komakuku: Zur Bedeutung von Österreich-Ungarn als internationaler Seemacht,” (bibliography), in which the importance of Ferdinand Maximilian and Admiral Tegetthoff is explained. 12 Recently, Andreas Rupprechter, the owner of the “Kaiser Maximilian ” in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, born and raised in Kufstein, Tyrol, however, shared with me valuable studies he has made about the emperor. I would like to thank him for his help. 13 In ‘The Herzstein Latin American Reading Room Gallery, Zimmerman Library, The Univer- sity of New Mexico, from April 28 to September 16, 2008, as organized and curated by Roland Rodríguez, then MA candidate in art history on Mexico in the 19th century, whom I thank for a guided tour he gave for me.

156 Votivkirche, built in 1853 under the instigation of Maximilian for his brother Franz Joseph, who had survived an attempt on his life. Today the church serves as the official memorial location for Austrian-Mexican relations and the fate of Maximilian in Mexico. (Foto: Wikipedia, Gryffindor)

Ferdinand Maximilian was the first of three younger brothers of Austrian and later Austrian-Hungarian emperor Francis Josef I, born in 1830 and two years older than Ferdinand Max. This younger brother evolved as a kind and fair second-in-line leader in Austria and was popular with the people, yet also enjoyed, as mentioned, the status of being the favorite of his ambitious Bavarian mother Sophie of Wittelsbach. Jealousy between the brothers, particularly by the elder, has been well documented, and adds a psychological element to all the research, that still brings novel results when investigated more. In fact, the younger Max tried to do everything to show his brother loyalty. In 1853 an attempt was made on his brother’s life in the eleventh of Vienna, called Simmering, which Franz Joseph survived. Max collected funds and had a memorial church erected for him, begun one year later, that represents one of Vienna’s landmark buildings of “Ringstraße” now, the city’s grand boulevard surrounding the innermost district. In this Neo-Gothic church, Votivkirche, one finds a corner dedicated to Maximilian and Mexico with a large Mexican plaque memorizing the two countries’ joint history. Shortly after his brother’s execu- tion in Querétero, Mexico, in June 1867, Franz Joseph had a larger than life size statue erected outside Schoenbrunn Castle in 1871, for “Ferdinand Maximilian, Erzherzog von Österreich, Kaiser von Mexiko” (Archduke of Austria, Emperor of Mexico), making up, among other things, for Maxen’s accusation that he did not want him to be emperor as well. Nowadays, hardly anyone takes notice of

157 this monument – except for the pigeons, that enjoy their noticeable relaxation on the emperor’s shoulders and head. They are ignorant, of course, of the fact that the habanera ‘La Paloma’ (= the dove) by the Spanish composer Sabastián Yradier (1809–65), also the voice teacher of Napoleon III’s wife Empress Eugenie, was supposed to be the short-lived Mexican emperor’s and his wife’s Charlotta favorite tune. By the way, the presence of all monuments and memorabilia surrounding Ferdinand Max – from this statue to the Castle of Miramar on the Northern Adriatic coast from his days in Italy, to the Belgian quarters of his wife’s family in Bouchout near , to the impressive castle of Chapultepec in Mexico City, that is still a major tourist attraction, to the musical traditions of Mexico and New Mexico kept alive in mariachi bands and other folk-music14, indicate the enormous effect of this short era. If we take, for example, the musical tradition: Enrique Lamadrid quotes the book by music researcher Jack Loeffler, entitled “La Musica de los Viejitos: Hispano Folk Music of the Rio Grande del Norte,” in which he is listed as co-author together with Katherine Loeffler. This musical tradition is still alive today in New Mexico. To top this fact, only recently Gustavo Arellano stated in his rubric of “Ask a Mexican!”15: “Some Mexicans mistakenly think we ripped off our quinceañera waltzes from Germans when, in fact, we stole it from the Hapsburg court of Emperor Maximilian.” Arellano answers a write-in question “Is there something also did right in Mexico?” as follows: “Polacks and Bohunks,” thus Polish and Bohemians,“ introduced squeezeboxes (accordions) to the borderlands, not Ger- mans.” Of course, many Polish and all the Bohemians had Austrian citizenship in those days, who used these instruments, including the metal horns and trumpets, as famously employed not only in European folk music, but also by Austrian classi- cal composers W. A. Mozart, Franz Schubert, Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler. In this vein Loeffler and Lamadrid do not agree as strongly in their book that waltzes and polkas came mainly through the influence of Maximilian, rather they speak of various influences, but still mention the short era of the second empire as crucial. A great deal of New Mexican music, they point out, had already come with the conquest of Oñate as of 1598. This happened also in the midst of Habsburg rule, when particularly the missions played church music that was known in the entire realm of the large Habsburg family. Maximilian I, the aforementioned grandfather of Charles V, was known as the most impressive supporter of renaissance music, as it is played and preserved

14 My colleague at the University of New Mexico, Professor Enrique Lamadrid, now the Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, has undertaken extensive studies on the influences upon Mexico from Europe, among them the short era of Maximilian, during whose time the folk music scene of greater Mexico, thus also the former Mexican parts now belonging to the United States of America, was strongly deepened and enlarged. See the bibliography for “La Musica de los Viejitos” (MdV). 15 “Ask a Mexican” in: Weekly Alibi, July 17–23, 2008, 15.

158 nowadays by New Mexico’s well known group “La Musica Antigua de Albu- querque”.16 In 1523 his grandson Charles V sent Peter de Ghent, a famous luthier or instrument maker to Mexico City as an official representative of the court where the craftsman established a school of instrument making that occupied eventually all of Mexico, so that some instruments of this age can still be found in and cultural centers there. Peter de Ghent was an illegitimate son of Maximilian I, and thus uncle of Charles V. There can be no doubt that the great European music tradition as found in Habsburg realm of Spain, the Holy Roman Empire of Germany, Austria, and the Lowlands, was transported to the New World, and that Ferdinand Maximilian also tried to add to this tradition. It dominated in Austria under his brother Franz Joseph I, who held together an empire of twenty nations by using the graces of music to internationalize his country, and it was adopted by Maximilian in a similar at- tempt to counterbalance the Mexican war situation he could not avoid or overcome. How the introduction of this music took place exactly can only be assumed, when considering that the troops, particularly the Austrian Legion of some seven thousand men, were in Mexico for more than two years, namely from 1865 to 1867, and several hundred of them remained in Mexico permanently there- after. During the various attempts between battles to fraternize with the popula- tion, music could have played a strong part. Even the French troops, occupying Mexico two years earlier than the Austrians, could have added to that, since the importance of “mariachi” music occurred after the stay of Maximilian and his French commander-in-chief Achille Bazaine. The literature speaks very often of grand galas at the in Mexico City, so that it is not farfetched to assume that similar, yet more frugal gaiety also took place among the people and the foot soldiers. This is the tradition that fostered itself among the people in the entire Latin-American world of North America, thus also in New Mexico. The most famous among the dances and the music was the waltz, of which Loeffler and Lamadrid summarize:

The music […] for the Spanish colonial dances did not actually find its way into the region of the Río Grande del Norte until the mid-nineteenth century during the brief and disastrous reign of Maximilian. […] It worked its way northward from Mexico where it melted with the tradition of la gente, who claim it as their own and who play it to this day (MdV, p. 134).

About the waltz they explain that it swept Europe after the and may have been introduced to Mexico and northward “preceding the brief reign of Maximilian” (MdV, p. 138).

16 “La Musica Antigua de Albuquerque” has been with Albuquerque and New Mexico for over two decades and is managed and directed by the Sheinbergs, a dedicated couple with a high sense of cultural mission.

159 The geopolitical situation almost dictates that historical research of the Southwest in the United States considers the intrinsic participation in two main directions of historical development of European-American affairs, as already alluded to. In fact, it is the last crosswise bastion of Spanish-Catholic and Northern European-Protestant development. One could follow both main paths back to the Deed of Worms in 1521, thus the meeting between the Catholic Habs- burg Emperor Charles V and his Protestant opponent Martin Luther, or some decades later, in the famous year of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, between the Spaniards and the English, which divided the mental attitude of

‘Christian’ conquest of the Americas in this way. These Spanish and German / Anglo-Saxon traces are meeting in New Mexico and the Southwest and have formed an idiosyncratic blend of a culture of its own since the mid-eighteen- hundreds, beginning around the time of the Mexican-American war, which brought the United States more than half of Mexico as a war related gain – namely part of , all of and New Mexico, and several states to the north thereof, as well as Western Texas. In fact, for a while this entire area had been labeled on the world maps as , and, as one of its vast subdivisions, New Mexico which thus outdid its present dimensions manifold. Ferdinand Maximilian’s era falls into fermenting these times which were to lead to the present cultural and political situation. That there should be many overlapping elements to be found on either side of the opposing parties’ realms goes without saying. No wonder that the residual evidence is also caught up in fiction and lore, which does not bother too much with exact research data, even though it offers many truth-bearing clichés; that also pertains to Karl May’s afore mentioned mostly fictional account in five volumes. The most obvious traces are to be found in literature, film, and the already mentioned music scene that the Hispanic New Mexicans consider with the Mexicans as their folk music. They counterbalance an unbelievably large number of scholarly publications and journalistic essays on the topic of Ferdinand Maximilian and his opponent in political democratic ideology, Benito Juarez. In all this it is mandatory that one reads the major sources in English, Spanish, even in Portuguese as referenced to Brazil17, in German and, in connection with Napoleon III and the Belgians in French. There even are documents in Latin, as they were communicated with and through the Vatican in clerical circles, which played the role of the “eminence gris” in all this, since Ferdinand Max did visit and consult with the pope before deciding to leave for and on his way to the New World. Mexico has shown some closeness to Austria since – as there has been a certain admission of remorse that Maximilian was executed. For, almost a century later, Mexico was the first state to protest Austria being occupied by

17 and Austria shared their history when a Habsburg daughter was married to Pedro I during the episode of Brazilian-Portuguese royalty in the 19th century.

160 Hitler in 1938, and the first state again to recognize the sovereignty of Austria after World War II in 1945 when signing the official documents. Obviously, the entire era around Maximilian’s episode points to other world events during Maximilian’s era – from Italy’s independence in 1866, to Bismarck’s conflict with Austria in the battle of Koeniggraetz in the same year, and this German chancellor’s conflict with Napoleon III – leading shortly thereafter to the

Franco / Prussian War of 1870/71, in which A. Bazaine was one of the two main commanders on the French side. During the sixties also the takes place and Abe Lincoln, as mentioned before, enters this scene. Rarely are these monumental connections of the transatlantic theater considered in even the most outstanding presentations on that era and Maximilian himself.18 It does transpire though that he was an enlightened, well meaning ruler who was guided by the dream-bound ideas of introducing a parliamentary monarchy in Mexico after the model of – with Benito Juarez as his prime minister. Juarez, who was indeed approached in writing by Maximilian, of course, never considered this idea, nor did his opponents the Mexican conservatives, who had helped Maximilian, at first, to enter the country for their own selfish reasons. They never wanted to hear anything of sharing their power with the huge underprivileged population of Mexico at the time. Most characterizations of Maximilian and his ambitious, beautiful wife Charlotte – also Charlotta or Carlota – show them as civilized, enlightened, yet monarchial rulers, but fail to go beyond the immediate concerns, mostly of Mexico and the Southwest, in order to unfold the gigantic history within the Trans-Atlantic realm. A view at later literature projects Austrian expressionist writer Franz Werfel’s lesser known play “Juarez und Maximilian”, written in 1925, and based on Benita Harding’s novel “The Phantom Crown”, that was made into the prominent film “Juarez” in 1939 – with even Bette Davis in Charlotte’s and Brian Ahearn in Maximilian’s role. Several film scripts were said to have been written, one of them by John Houston, and the main tune of the film was once more the already cited ‘La Paloma.’ The film sheds light on the main figures’ personal fate, thereby concentrating on the imperial couple in their odd relationship to Benito Juarez, yet moves the greater connections of the complex international situation that caused this crisis in Mexico, to the sidelines. Therefore the personal affair of the key figures is stretched further in the Western film “Vera Cruz” of the fifties, showing Maximilian, who enjoyed his noble life and did not mind making a fool of himself at times, to serve his purpose. Gary Cooper as a former confederate, also French speaking officer, and Burt Lancaster as a mercenary from the Civil War in main roles, meet Max as a funny, but self-centered leader who wants to rob Mexico

18 Joan Haslip’s “The Crown of Mexico” and other excellent accounts of the history of the era represent these exceptions (See also the studies of Marianne Oeste de Bopp, UNAM, Mexico City, ca. 1965).

161 of its gold, a wagon of which is to be sent to Europe and protected by these two against some (other) robbers on the way to Vera Cruz. No mention is made that the French and the British thought they had a right to this gold and had supported Maximilian’s adventure in the hope for it to be returned. They had given a large sum of money to Mexico, thereby corrupting the of 1823, in that country’s war against the United States in the late thirties and forties. The film and several other fictional renderings omit to allude at least to the larger historical network of interdependent connections in world history. Ferdinand Maximilian with his, no doubt, upright character, but untimely and flawed political views, deserves central acknowledgement. Max was executed and shot at the fair age of 35 years, as it has been portrayed repeatedly by French artist Edouard Manet19 only the year after the event. This topic was shown as recent as in December of 2006 by New York’s MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). To make things even more absurd, there is a rather recent account (2002) by Johann G. Lughofer20 that adventures to claim that Maximilian was not shot to death, but that the bullets were blind, and that he, thereafter, disap- peared under the pseudonym of Justo Armas to El Salvador to enjoy a long life without anyone knowing – except for his freemason brother Juarez who was to have made his escape possible. There is no binding proof to verify this story either, even though it is presented in a scholarly manner by Vienna’s reputable publishing house Carl Ueberreuter. Maximilian’s wife Charlotte, eight years his junior in age, who had tried to turn events around by going to Europe, last minute, and by talking in vain to the powers that be, literally lost her mind over these worries. She was cursed to live until her 87th year in the relative comfort of Miramare and, after , of Bouchet, one of her royal Belgian father’s castles21 south of Brussels, almost unaware of her surroundings in a demented state, until she died as late as 1927. The conclusion of this study has to remain open ended, as it has meant to raise attention to the vast realm of this historical epoch surrounding Ferdinand Max and his fate, but also its extension to New Mexico and the Southwest in its entirety. Let alone fictional rendering in film and literature, further research and documentation should view this brief era at a crossroads of historical developments above and beyond confining national viewpoints, and thereby as an international topic within German and Austrian Studies.

19 Edouard Manet, (s), “The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian.” 1868–69. Oil on canvas. As shown in the MoMA, New York. Shown during the winter holiday season 2006/ 07; as announced in the New York Times,” Friday, December 8, 2006, B31. 20 Johan Georg Lughofer, “Des Kaisers neues Leben: Der Fall Maximilian von Mexiko.” Vienna: Ueberreuter, 2002. 21 Charlotte’s castle and last abode in Belgium. Before the end of World War I she lived in Maximilian’s and her castle of Miramare near Trieste though.

162