Today's Traces of Maximilian, the Habsburg
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10.3726/82040_149 Today’s Traces of Maximilian, the Habsburg – in Mexico, even in New Mexico 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 Austria, 1832 to 1867, assumed the emperor- 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 president of Mexico, opting for a state modeled after the United States of America – where Abraham Lincoln 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 empire, 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 Latin America 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 history of Mexico. […]. 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 Belgium 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 Berlin, 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’ France got into the habit of imprinting her power upon world affairs – at least from Louis XIV to Napoleon III. The latter manipulated the politics 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 Queen Victoria 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 Europe 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 Americas to his domain. This was the Habsburgs’ until 1700, when the last Spanish Habsburg Charles 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 Spain. 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 Madrid, 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 Lorraine, 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.