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LOTHAR HÖBELT Nostalgic Agnostics: Austrian Aristocrats and Politics, 1918-1938 LOTHAR HÖBELT Nostalgic Agnostics: Austrian Aristocrats and Politics, 1918-1938 in KARINA URBACH (ed.), European Aristocracies and the Radical Right 1918-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 161–185 ISBN: 978 0 199 23173 7 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 10 Nostalgic Agnostics: Austrian Aristocrats and Politics, 1918-1938 LOTHAR HOBELT J edes Volk wird seine Reaktion erhalten; das eine sie harter, das andere sie gelinder erfahren; kurz gesagt, jedes Volk bekommt die Reaktion, die es verdient. (Every people will have its reaction; some will have a harsher experience, some a milder one; in short, every people will get the reaction it deserves.) Prince Aloys Liechtenstein, Das Neue Rei.eh, 6July 1919 I Revisionists without a Cause The end of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy left the (German-) Austrian republic with thousands of ennobled officers and civil servants. It can only be surmised that their politics were similar to those of the middle classes in general, which is why this essay will focus on the few dozen aristocratic families who were either large landowners or belonged to the charmed circle of families which had held hereditary seats in the old Austrian upper house. Any notion that these aristocrats had reason to regard the consti- tutional and territorial arrangements of 1918-19 with anything other than distaste can safely be discounted. In terms of longings and frustrations, they were probably more estranged from their political environment than any other noble society in Europe except for that of Bohemia, and thus more right wing. Yet politi- cal action is not about wishful thinking, but about constraints and incentives. Initially there were few incentives, but there were many constraints. Compared with the Bohemian aristocracy, they had no agenda. Bohemian aristocrats had clear-cut grievances: they had been hit LOTHER HOBELT by land reform, shared the resentment of Sudeten Germans at a world turned upside down, and did not relish the influence ofleft- wing parties in the Prague government. To that extent, Austrians were better off, although not usually economically. Land reform was talked about but never actually carried out; 1 there were no more ethnic disputes in the rump state of Austria; and the Socialists had left the government for good in 1920. Their losses were of prestige, status, and political potential. Thus their revision- ism had no obvious and clear-cut goals. Aristocrats were under- standably nostalgic about the world they had lost, but 'all the King's Horses and all the King's Men couldn't put Humpty- Dumpty together again'. The Habsburg monarchy could not be reconquered; optimists might hope that sooner or later people would repent and see reason, but that required patience, and there was little that could be done to hasten the process. That is why they can accurately be described as nostalgic agnostics. In the meantime, there was little left for conservatives to defend or 'conserve', at least psychologically. The old state had not simply changed colours, but broken apart. The ABC that had upheld aristocratic influence before 1918, despite universal suffrage, army, bureaucracy, and court, no longer worked. The safeguards that had held democracy in check before 1918 no longer existed. The mass parties had started to partition the state among themselves, leaving little room for deference to tradition. Aristocrats had often been proud of their position above party, and few had stood for election to the lower house after 1907. 2 That left them without a safe power base, or even a line of retreat, after 1918. Their old social standing was a position not to defend, but to reconquer. Referring to the monarchy in veiled terms, Ignaz Seipel, the new leader of the Christian Social Party, who had been a minis- ter in the last imperial government and who took over as chan- cellor in 1922, summed up the situation in a fashion that was 1 Franz Bernreiter, 'Die Entwicklung des GroBgrundbesitzes in Osterreich von der Jahrhundertwende bis 1938' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Vienna, 1979); Ernst Metz, 'GroBgrundbesitz und Bodenreform in Osterreich 1919 bis 1924' (Ph.D. thesis, University ofVienna, 1984). 2 Those who did were Aloys Liechtenstein for the Christian Social Party and Karl Auersperg for the Nationalverband. Count Leopold Kolowrat, who married an American heiress and was the father of Austria's pioneer of film, was elected for a German Bohemian constituency in 1907, but died soon after. The Austrian Aristocracy fitting, and yet almost too glib for a Catholic priest: 'The fallen ones of the war will not return. I believe in the resurrection of the dead, but only onjudgement Day.'3 In 1918 Seipel had made himself unpopular with the dynasty for publicly suggesting a way out that would enable tender consciences to support the Republic. His policy was clearly to defend substance rather than symbol, and to sacrifice the monarchy in order to prevent a real revolution.4 Geopolitically, neither of the two options available to Austria, namely, Anschluft, the merger with Germany, or a Danubian federation, was feasible at the present time. Of course, it was possible to consider a synthesis at a higher level than the Danubian Federation. Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi5 and his pan-European sect might be seen as the prophets of such a project; at a different level, Seipel's confidant, later to be adviser to the underground Nazi party, Prince Karl Anton Rohan, who used the same publisher as Coudenhove, would toy with European ideas in a different context. But both were clearly outsiders, and were often seen as dangerously affected by the Zeitgeist. A restoration of the Habsburgs within the limits of the Alpine rump state alone seemed a let-down. As Count Adolph Dubsky put it, a Habsburg would surely disdain to return as a small princeling (Duodeefurst) to the town where his ancestors had ruled as Caesars.6 Similarly, Starhemberg and his followers argued that the whole question of legitimism was irrelevant unless it offered an opportunity to transform the Central European land- scape, because the crown would act as a magnet. 7 At the begin- ning, of course, restoration was not quite such an attractive option either, but for different reasons. Relations between the 3 lgnaz Seipel, 'Die Wege zum Frieden', Europiiisclu Revue, 1 (1925), 20. 4 The only concession to dynastic loyalty that Vienna's Christian Socials (but not their farming brethren) made was to leave the chamber when the expropriation of the Habsburg family fortune was voted through unanimously in April 1919. Peter Bohmer and Ronald Faber, Di£ Erben des Kaisers: Wemgehiirt das Habsburgervermiigen? (Vienna, 2004), 34. 5 Richard Nikolaus Coudenove-Kalergi, Adel (Leipzig, 1922), 28, 39, argued that perse- cution had provided the best possible selection for theJewish race. For a biographical sketch, see Anita Ziegerhofer-Prettenthaler, Botscluifkr Europas: Richard .Jliikolaus Coudenlwve- Kalergi und di.e Paneuropa-Bewegung in den ZUJ(lTIZiger und dreifliger Jaftren (Vienna, 2004). 6 Adolf Dubsky, Di£ AnschliifJ.froge im Rahmen einer mit iisterreichischen Legitimisten gyuhrten Diskussion (Salzburg, 1934), 9. 7 Hoyos Archive, SchloB Hom, F. 348/uob, diary Count Rudolph Hoyos, 23Jan. 1936. (The meeting had taken place on 12Jan.) LOTHER HOBELT Habsburgs and the political elite had no longer been quite so amicable even before the break-up of the monarchy. Francis Joseph, who died in 1916, had of course commanded their unswerving loyalty. But in the crisis that blew up in 1918 over his successor's contacts with the French, known as the Sixtus affair, the majority of the aristocracy clearly sided with his foreign secretary Count Ottokar Czernin against the blessed Charles I. 8 The Vienna Jockey Club, focal point of the social whirl, would heatedly defend Czernin's reputation during the 1920s.9 Some of his no longer quite so uncompromisingly faithful followers might also hold the Emperor's refusal to fight for his throne in November against him. After all, when the game was over in Germany, the general staff told the Emperor to take the blame and abdicate; in Austria, Charles received offers to march on Vienna and turned them down. 10 Joseph M. Baernreither, a clever if obsequious follower of aristocratic politics, hinted at a conspiracy when he commented upon his sovereign's inaction in November 1918: 'The Emperor leaves us in the lurch and punts on anarchy . Once confusion has become general, with the Entente willing, he may return. Thus, after the flood, once again the old Habsburg ark. Dumba says that is too Machiavellian. Maybe for the Emperor, but not for his entourage.'11 Comments made by the Emperor a few months later lend some plausibility to that suggestion. Perhaps Baernreither underrated him. 12 In any case, by 1922 Charles was dead, and the heir to the 8 For Charles's personal views see the documents in Elisabeth Kovacs, Untergang oder Rettung der Donaumonarchie?, ii. Kaiser und Konig Karl I. (IV.): Politische Dokumente aus lnternationalen Archwen (Vienna, 2004). 9 Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna (hereafter cited as HHStA) PA I 1092a, Czernin Papers.
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