107 Kleinwächter, op. cit., p. 131, quotes a story of ‘an eminent German political personality’ in Prague in the 1870s saying with a laugh: ‘the only thing wrong with the Czechs is that no one takes them seriously.’
108 On this see Kleinwächter, op. cit., pp. 139 ff.; also (satirically) Gustav Meyrink’s novel, Walpurgisnacht.
109 For that reason, when the Slovenes asked the Czechs for support for their programme in 1889, the Czechs refused, lest it should set a precedent.
110 For details, see Hugelmann, op. cit., pp. 459 ff.
111 The proportion of Slovenes to the total population of Styria showed a small drop, but this was owing to the faster growth (due largely to immigration) of the population in the industrial North of the province. There was no Germanization in South Styria. The Slovenes had made a big gain in 1857, when the Kreis of Marburg (Maribor) was attached to the episcopal See of Lavant, which was already Slovene. The new Bishop, Mgr Slomšek, was a strong Slovene nationalist, and M.K.P. tells us (III. 174) that ‘after a few decades, there was not one single German parish priest left in Lower Styria, even in the German towns’.
112 The earliest figures (1846–51) showed 96·2% of the population speaking ‘Serbo-Croat’ and 3·7%, Italian; the figures for 1890 were 96·2% and 3·1%. There had been an odd shift in 1880, to 93·3% and 5·8%, but this must have been due to some fortuitous cause. It looks as though 20,000 persons had got into the wrong rubric.
113 Above, p. 425.
114 Hugelmann, p. 639. Austrian Dalmatia extended further south than the old Venetian province.
115 A symbol of this was that the premises for the Landtag were now constructed.
116 A. von Guthry, Galizien, Land und Leute, Vienna, 1916, p. 111.
117 Fischel, Panslawismus, p. 359.
118 There is an interesting similarity between the fate of the Jasicza and that of the ‘Ugro-Rusin’ language (of which the writer still possesses a grammar) which the Hungarian authorities tried to introduce into Carpatho-Ruthenia after recovering it in 1939. Ugro-Rusin, like the Jasicza, was swept out of the field by Ukrainian.
119 On his release Naumovics went to Russia, where he adopted the Orthodox faith and became a professional Pan-Slavist agitator.
120 The proportionate increase of the Polish language was larger than this, but this was due to the linguistic assimilation of Jews and ‘other’ elements, few of whom joined the Ruthenes.
121 The view is expressed by writers so different in their outlooks as Kleinwächter (pp. 185–6) and Jászi (pp. 394–5).
122 This was in 1882, when Francis Joseph was visiting Trieste for the celebrations of the quincentenary of the city’s inclusion in the Habsburg Monarchy. Oberdank, who was not a Triestiner but a German Austrian who had deserted from his regiment during the occupation of Bosnia, had come from Rome as one of a band of twelve who had sworn to assassinate teh Emperor. He was arrested before he could carry out his design, and executed. As the place of his burial was not revealed, irredentists made his mother’s grave a place of pilgrimage.
123 There was no single prosecution in the Bukovina for a political offence during the absolutist period; the first case was in 1871.
124 Beust, op. cit., II. 106.
125 Molisch, op. cit., p. 93.
126 He used to call the Feasts of the Church and months of the year by Old Germanic names of his own invention, such as Julfest (Christmas), Heumond (June), etc. It was he who introduced the greeting ‘Heil’, afterwards institutionalized by Hitler (who greatly admired him) in place of the pleasant Austrian ‘Grüss Gott’.
127 He had been elected as a Liberal in 1870 and had joined the Progressives in 1873.
128 See Plener’s Erinnerungen, II. 167 ff.
129 Id., pp. 213 ff.
130 One writer (Wandruschka, in Republik, ed. Benedikt, pp. 374–5) has shrewdly pointed out the influence, in this respect, of the year’s military service which students had to do among the professional officers, with their still largely dynastic and supra-national outlook. Naturally, too, they tended to shed their social radicalism as they grew older and acquired settled jobs.
131 In 1888 a (Jewish-edited) Viennese newspaper published a premature report of the death of the German Emperor, Wilhelm I. Schönerer, with some of his followers, entered the newspaper’s offices and assaulted members of its staff. For this and for toasting Wilhelm publicly as ‘our glorious Emperor’, he was deprived of his mandate and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, and Francis Joseph took away his patent of nobility (Charles I restored this to him in 1917). Francis Joseph is said to have been especially wounded by Schönerer’s having voted against the Army estimates on the ground that world power position was a luxury which a rotten edifice like Austria could not afford.
132 Herbst (who died on 25 June 1892) had lost favour by proposing concessions to the Italians of the Trentino, in order to entice them into the Liberal fold. Plener was elected official leader of the United German Left in 1889. The choice showed the curious capacity of the German Liberals for picking the wrong men to lead them, for Plener, as his memoirs show only too abundantly, was as doctrinaire as Herbst and almost as unpleasant personally.
133 Forty children of school age were to have a school if their parents had resided in a commune for five years, three years sufficing if there were eighty children.
134 Prazak, as Minister of Justice, had already issued a decree on 23 September 1886, ordering Czech to be treated on an equal footing with German in the Oberlandesgerichte of Prague and Brünn.
135 Some say it was Rieger who failed to issue the invitations; others, Taaffe. In any case, it seems likely that the omission was due to the wish of the Emperor, who held a low opinion both of the intelligence and of the loyalty of the Young Czechs. But it was a grievous error, for the Young Czechs had made a spectacular advance at the expense of their seniors in the Bohemian Landtag Elections of 1889.
136 The agreement was opposed also by the Germans of the Alpine Lands, who were nervous that it might set a precedent.
137 For the moment, the Schönerer group (of four Deputies) accepted Steinwender’s leadership.
138 The full figures were: United German Left, 109; German Nationals, 17; Christian Socials, 14; Hohenwart-Liechtenstein Group, 29; Bohemian Feudalists, 18; ‘Centre Party’ (dissident feudals, mainly from Moravia, otherwise known as the ‘Coronini Party’), 8; Polish Club, 58; Ruthenes, 8; Italians, 15 (11 Liberal-National, 4 National Clericals); Slovenes, 16; Croats, 7; Serbs, I; Roumanians, 4; Old Czechs, 12; Young Czechs, 37.
139 He had once let fall the remark that ‘it was possible to rule Austria without the Germans’.
140 Khuenberg was, indeed, forced by his colleagues to resign a few months later.
141 In the course of the emergency, 179 persons were prosecuted and sentences totalling 278 years passed; 7 papers were forced to stop publication and 17 associations dissolved.
142 In two Ministerial Councils (on 18 June 1893, and again three days later) he said that there was so much agitation, and there were so many proposals for electoral reform, that it was absolutely necessary for the Government to take the lead.
143 The literacy provision would, however, have actually reduced the number of voters in Galicia, the Bukovina and Dalmatia.
144 So much so that Kálnoky, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, only learnt of the whole business when he received a query about it from the King of Greece, who had read of it in the newspapers. Kálnoky complained bitterly, and not unreasonably, to Taaffe, and his objections are generally believed to have been one of the causes which made Francis Joseph dismiss Taaffe. The move had possibly been kept from Kálnoky out of fear that he would try to stop it.
145 The result of the reform would in fact have favoured the Czechs. According to Denis’s calculations, the 400 Deputies would have consisted of 145 Germans, 92 Czechs, 64 Poles, 53 Ruthenes, 22 Slovenes, 13 Serbs and Croats and 11 Italians and Roumanians.
146 This is the correct w
ording, for Taaffe did not resign, but was dismissed. The favourite example adduced by those who like to dwell on Francis Joseph’s ingratitude towards his servants is that Taaffe thereafter sank into complete obscurity; he never again was consulted on public affairs. But his retirement seems to have been at least in part voluntary, and he died only two years later.
147 The list was: Windischgraetz (Hohenwart), Minister President; Marquis Becquehem (Hohenwart), Interior; Ernst von Plener (German Liberal), Finance; Count von Schönborn (Hohenwart), Justice; Count Wurmbrand (German Liberal), Commerce; Count Julius Falkenhayn (Hohenwart), Agriculture; Ritter von Madeyski (Pole), Cults and Education; Count Welfersheimb (Non-Party), Defence; Ritter von Jaworski (Pole), Minister for Galicia.
148 In fact, there were more Slovene than German pupils in the gymnasium.
149 Under Kielmansegg, the appropriation was passed without difficulty. The Slovenes were satisfied, and Cilli in fact remained an essentially German town until 1945, when its inhabitants were expelled or massacred. See Suttner, op. cit., I. 112. (Suttner’s work contains a very detailed account of the Cilli crisis).
150 The delay was simply to allow Badeni to carry through the Landtag elections in Galicia.
151 The list was: Badeni, Minister President and Interior; Ritter von Bilinski (Finance); Frh. von Gautsch (Cults and Education); Count Ledebur (Agriculture); Count Gleisbach (Justice); H. Glanz (Commerce); Welfersheimb (Defence); Dr Rittner (Galicia). Soon after, the Railways were given a separate Ministry, under a soldier, F. M. L. von Guttenberg. Ledebur was a Bohemian Feudalist; Gautsch, Glanz and Gleisbach, permanent Civil Servants; Bilinski and Rittner, Poles. As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had also just changed hands, and its new holder, Count Agenor von Goluchowski, jun., was a Pole also, five of the portfolios, including four of the key ones, were in Polish hands.
152 Eleven persons who had received long sentences benefited from the amnesty; the shorter sentences had already been served.
153 See below, p. 672. Badeni’s chief motive seems to have been a wish to placate the Hungarians, whom Lueger detested both for their bruyant nationalism and on account of the Jewish influence in their leading circles, and to whom he had been repeatedly and grossly abusive. There is also reason to believe that indirect pressure was applied by the House of Rothschild. But Badeni himself disliked violent anti-Semitism.
154 From ten to eight kronen. The currency reform described elsewhere had now been carried through, so that this was equivalent to lowering the qualification from five to four gulden.
155 The reform in fact was very far from honouring the principle of one man, one vote. The electors for the 85 Deputies in the Landed Proprietors’ Curia numbered 5,431; those for the 21 representatives of the Chambers of Commerce, 556; for the 118 urban communes, 493,804 and for the 129 rural, 1,505,466, while the 72 representatives of the General Curia were chosen by 5,004,222 electors.
156 I base these figures on Kolmer (VI. 218) but no two lists ever agree exactly.
157 For the details of this, see below, pp. 701–2.
158 This was the occasion on which the Liberal Deputy, Lecher, spoke for thirteen hours. The feat was the more remarkable because all the speech was, allegedly, to the point. When Dr Lueger tried to speak, it was three hours before he could make himself heard.
159 Count Falkenhayn (after whom the measure was subsequently called) proposed it in a voice heard only by the President of the House and the official stenographers. The President, a Pole named Abrahamowycz (strictly, a Polonized Armenian), declared the measure adopted before the obstructionists had noticed that a vote was being taken. In fact, the measure was mild enough. It empowered the President to exclude a Deputy for three days, or the House to do so for a term up to thirty days. The next day ten Deputies were forcibly ejected by the police.
160 I count as the other two, Metternich and Ficquelmont.
161 So, for example, Redlich, Franz Joseph, p. 393.
162 Taaffe, before his resignation, had said once that he had only two possible successors: Badeni and Thun. Badeni would last for three years and Thun for two. Both estimates were over-generous.
163 See below, p. 681.
164 Redlich, Franz Joseph, p. 394.
165 See above, pp. 595 ff.
166 Grosse Politik, XIII. 3486 (of 15 December 1898); see also id., 3480.
167 The last of the despatches recording exchanges in this vein reproduced in the Grosse Politik is dated 13 April.
168 It was being vigorously applauded and supported by the Superintendent General of the Lutheran Church in Berlin.
169 Another factor which may have been important, and is given by Tschuppik (p. 356) as the actual reason for Thun’s fall, was a campaign started by the Czechs that recruits called up for service, and not yet in uniform, should answer their names with Žde instead of hier. This sounds trivial, but we cannot dismiss it when we recall how enraged Francis Joseph was, a few years later, when the Hungarians tried to tamper with the sacrosanct unitary language of command in the Army.
170 See on this Kolmer, VII. 338 ff. Redlich, op. cit., is curiously unreliable on this question. He describes Thun’s Cabinet as ‘a purely civil servant’ one, omits all mention of the Kálnoky-Aehrenthal incident and says that Francis Joseph underwent another of his ‘sudden changes of mood’ and dismissed Thun ‘ungraciously’. None of these statements is correct. As Kolmer shows, the negotiations went on for weeks and Thun remained in high favour.
171 Eulenburg to Hohenlohe, Grosse Politik, XIII. 3513 (21 November 1899). ‘Die von dem Kaiser eingeschlagene, von höchstdemselbem mir persönlich bestätigte Wendung zum Deutschtum.’
172 On these, see Kolmer, l.c.
173 Succeeded in 1903 by Professor Randa.
174 Since none of these were realized, the reader is spared a recital of them.
175 See below, p. 670.
176 The delay was due partly to preparations for the census; partly to business connected with the Archduke Francis Ferdinand’s morganatic marriage and renunciation of the succession for his issue.
177 The full figures, according to Hugelmann (p. 217), were: German (Constitutional) Great Landed Proprietors, 30; German Clericals (Catholic People’s Party), 37; German Progressives, 39; German People’s Party, 48; Pan-Germans (Schönerer), 21; German Liberals (Freie Deutsche Vereinigung), 12; Styrian Peasant Party, 1; Christian Socials, 22; Social Democrats, 10; Young Czechs, 53; Czech National Party of Work, 5; Czech Agrarians, 6; Czech Catholic People’s Party, 2; Czech Great Landed Proprietors, 16; Polish Club, 53; Stojalowski’s Group, 5; Polish People’s Party, 3; Polish Social Party, 1; Slovenes, 16; Croats and Serbs, 11; Italians, 19; Ruthenes, 10; Roumanians, 5.
178 Inclusive of dependents; this applies also to the other occupational figures quoted.
179 The other groups were: finance, commerce and communications, 2,604,000 (10·0%); public services, 864,000 (3·4%); free professions, 107,000 (0·4%); rentiers and capitalists, 831,000 (3·2%); active military, 263,000 (1·0%); others and unknown, 760,000 (3·0%).
180 The programme, which was originally estimated to cost 480,000,000 kr., but although never completed, cost, imperfect as it was, far more than that sum, was mainly concerned with communications. There was to be a second railway line (the Tauernbahn) to Trieste, other railways in Galicia, Bohemia and North Styria, and canals joining the Danube to the Oder, and thence to the Vistula and the Dniester, and between the Danube and the Moldau, to link up with the Upper Elbe; also extensive improvements to the harbour of Trieste.
181 The price of wheat touched almost rock-bottom in 1891, when it was only 14 kr. After that it rose gradually: the average over the decade was 17·3 kr.
182 Industry was developing, even in Galicia, especially the oil industry, in which production rose from 32 million tons in 1880 to 1,763 m.t. in 1910. This industry, however, is one which employs relatively little manpower.
183 In 1896 they had secured the passage of a law making it a penal offence to incite
a person to emigrate by holding out false prospects to him.
184 According to Drage, op. cit., p. 67, agricultural wages in Austria rose from 20–250%, according to district, between 1877 and 1902.
185 Drage, op. cit., p. 69, attributes this move to a ring of Jews, who by now owned 453 of the 2,430 large estates in Galicia, leased 800 of the 1,000 which were leased, and held the whip hand, through mortgages, over many others. Thirty per cent of the estate managers were Jews.
186 For a brilliant description of this operation see Steed, op. cit., pp. 138 ff.
187 Drage, op. cit., p. 237.
188 See on this May, op. cit., pp. 231 ff.
189 The voting in that year had been 92 Christian Socialists to 46 others. In the previous year the elections to the Council had given the Christian Socials 64 seats to 66 Liberals and 8 others. Lueger had been elected but had himself declined the appointment and the Council had been dissolved, with the above result.
190 Brügel, Geschichte, IV. 384. This gives a ‘Progress Report’ by Lands, but most Lands give only the Trade Union membership.
191 Tiefen, pp. 186–7, gives figures for the end of 1905, quoted from the Gewerkschaft. The chief ones are: Vienna, 97,198; Lower Austria (outside Vienna), 19,893; Bohemia, 94,325; Moravia, 37,599; Styria, 18,693; Silesia, 14,496. Galicia had only 8,017 (out of 113,839 workers in employment), the Alpine Lands a few thousands each and the tail was brought up by Bukovina (508) and Dalmatia (133). But Tiefen’s own calculation of the ratio of organized to total workers does not agree with his absolute figures.
192 See Cole, op. cit., p. 535.
193 The chief benefit of these went to the miners, whose conditions really improved, especially in respect of safety; they also got a reduction in their working day. Outside mines, the biggest advances were in connection with factory inspection and the Sunday rest, which became law in 1895, and the extension of accident insurance to transport workers.
194 See below, pp. 684 f., 803 f.
195 See on this Hantsch, Geschichte, II. 470–1. After the fusion of the People’s Party and the Christian Socials in the next decade, the name and nominal leadership of the two components passed to the Christian Socials, but the Catholic People’s Party contributed more of the spirit.
The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918) Page 109