Transatlantic Relations and the Great War

Austria-Hungary and the United States

Kurt Bednar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032064086
• eBook ISBN: 9781000461428
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Transatlantic Relations and the Great War explores the relations between the Danube Monarchy of Austria-Hungary and the modern US democracy and how that relationship developed over decades until it ended in a final rupture.

As the First World War drew to a close in late 1918, the Mid-European Union was created to fill the vacuum in Central and Eastern Europe as the old Danube Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was falling apart. One year before, in December 1917, the United States had declared war on Austria-Hungary and, overnight, huge masses of immigrants from the Habsburg Empire became enemy aliens in the US. Offering a major deviation from traditional historiography, this book explains how the countdown of mostly diplomatic events in that fatal year 1918 could have taken an alternative course. In addition to providing a narrative account of Austrian-Hungarian relations with the US in the years leading up to the First World War, the author also demonstrates how an almost total ignorance of the affairs of the Dual Monarchy was to be found in the US and vice versa.

This book is a fascinating and important resource for students and scholars interested in modern European and US history, diplomatic relations, and war studies.

1 A brief history of relations between Vienna and Washington

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202202-1

The Habsburg Empire and the American Republic concluded their first diplomatic cooperation in 1838. It was mainly the latter which pursued her case in order to facilitate access of American entrepreneurs to the large territory in the middle of Europe. But the year 1838 was not the first time the two powers tried to arrive at some sort of relationship. In fact, the period from the French Revolution via Napoleon to the Congress of Vienna rather interrupted a process which had commenced under Emperor Joseph II. In 1812, America herself fell victim to the spirit of these pugnacious years in her war with England. The American Republic would have disliked almost all the Congress concluded. Most certainly, she would not have welcomed, let alone participated in (had she been invited to), the Holy Alliance, an informal pact of Catholic emperors in Europe. Thus, when its influence petered out, it was time for another attempt for a transatlantic connection of the antipodes in Washington and Vienna.

Early period (up to 1838 and beyond)

Jonathan Singerton¹ investigated the earliest period of informal relations. His conclusion (“A Story of ‘Benign Neglect’”, quoting Rudolf Agstner²) covers relations between Philadelphia/Washington and Vienna probably in the best way (not only for the period of his study but also until 1917³). Over the years, relations passed phases best described as wavelike, with the crest seeing the “erosion of Habsburg neutrality”, in combination with the “development of postwar commerce”, even the first Habsburg representative in the United States; the trough was marked by the “trifling personage” of Thomas Jefferson and, in due course, “Habsburg disillusionment” caused by and, at the same time, causing “general imbecility, confusion, and misery”.⁴

The author described “what compelled an absolutist monarchy and democratic republic towards a diplomatic relationship” which “rested upon the primacy of commercial advantage … one proven by the revolutionary procurement of arms from the Austrian Netherlands and the prospective ventures of mercantile groups in Trieste”.⁵ On the one hand, petitions from businessmen like Christoph Beller in Trieste (August 1776) started “a flood of mercantile calls for action in order to benefit from the newly open North American ports”.⁶ On the other hand, “merchants lacked autonomy in the high-diplomatic level”⁷ where personalities in the political field called the shots and showed the way to take. As Singerton pointed out, with the American representation in Europe switching from Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Jefferson, a significant deterioration of perceptions occurred. This concurred with a little war⁸ provoked by the Holy Roman Emperor himself. Joseph II sought to enforce the final dismantling of the Barrier system which had closed the river Scheldt off from Austrian commerce. “The diplomatic fallout caused by … the Emperor’s decision to sail on two separate occasions two warships into Dutch waters … preventing a full-blown war between the small republic and the larger imperial power” changed Jefferson’s image of Joseph into “one of a despot and warmonger”.⁹

Official documents, along with comments by Hans Schlitter of the University of Vienna, uncovered and supplemented by the Belgian Hubert van Houtte in 1911,¹⁰ of course, spoke a different language. Thus, it took a quarter century for Americans to respond to Viennese publications containing “interesting information particularly upon … the subject of concluding a treaty of commerce”¹¹ between Emperor Joseph II and the American Republic.¹² Relying upon Schlitter’s work,¹³ van Houtte revealed the true course of negotiations, added by material stored in Brussels which was in competition with Trieste to organize the Empire’s U.S. trade.¹⁴ Altogether, the sources (used by the author) dealt with an impressive variety of issues like emigration of Europeans to America,¹⁵ bankruptcies there, fashions of American women, sale of European gin in America, use of carpets there, consumption of European linens, as well as the issue of paper money in America.

Commenting on van Houtte’s presentation in the same issue, Edmund Burnett¹⁶ listed all agreements the United States negotiated at the time. Already on September 17, 1776, Congress had adopted a frame for a deal with France which was to be used for the other countries as well: “Articles might be added or subtracted, enlarged or reduced or otherwise modified, but the plan retains through all the changes an easily recognized identity”.¹⁷ William Lee was chosen as commissioner to Vienna, but he “found no opportunity to negotiate a treaty with that court”.¹⁸

In 1782, “the Habsburgs had no navy, but acquired from the War of American independence a merchant fleet of traders who filled the tax coffers at ports like Ostend”.¹⁹ With trade came competition, suspicion, and challenge to neutrality. Not being a maritime nation, Austria faced, via the possession of the Austrian Netherlands, new questions of international law. Commerce dictated this period of relations with America; in other words, the merchants domiciled at Brussels. However, Trieste, the “Philadelphia of Europe”, had installed her own transatlantic trade channel with the American namesake and Baltimore. In view of some “commercial conventions … such as the naturalization of crew and supporters … the question now became, how to secure it”.²⁰ Thus, a treaty of commerce had to be made. While the merchants acted in the fringes of the realm, it was now up to politics in the center, and this “core-versus-periphery tension … haunted the tentative commercial steps with the United States”.²¹ This tension was personalized by Baron de Beelen-Bertholff who, with his family, left Brussels in July 1783 and, via various stopovers, arrived in Philadelphia in September that year. Naturally, he sent his reports back to Brussels, not to Vienna (let alone Trieste). Acting in an official but not accredited position for all Habsburg merchants, most of them accepted his overarching superiority; however, some preferred to install their own representatives, like George Simpson or Francesco Taddeo Reyer, both from Trieste, Austria’s major Mediterranean port and Brussel’s internal competitor. Even the Chancellor himself, Count Kaunitz, probably still disgruntled because he had failed to assert his candidate for Brussels, dispatched yet another representative, industrialist Joseph Paul Weinbrenner. On the other hand, the Bohemian-born Joseph Donath who carried Weinbrenner’s samples with him did communicate with Beelen. Overall, Singerton believes that the Trieste-Brussels tussle reflected the all too well-known tension between core and periphery.²²

It was Thomas Jefferson who turned out to be the real stumbling block on the path to a treaty of commerce. In October 1783, Congress had issued general instructions to the ministers at Versailles. They were to be used for “treaties with all the powers with which treaties were desirable”,²³ along with a new outline for them (May 1784). Thus, in July 1785, an agreement with Prussia was concluded. Again, Lee was set on Vienna once news came up that the Emperor was interested though insisting that the “first overtures”²⁴ should come from America.

While, by September 1784, both sides seemed to be ready for talks, in May 1786, Jefferson, with his commission expiring,²⁵ had to admit that no progress had been achieved in the meantime. Apparently, this had happened mainly because of differences in the understanding of diplomatic forms. Apart from such formalities, Burnett identified only minor differences between the Austrian draft and the Prussian treaty, such as in the field of maritime war law (contraband²⁶). While Benjamin Franklin “provided a comfortable base … this changed suddenly following the introduction of Jefferson”. His “absence and then personal awkwardness in the encounters with” the Austrian envoy in Paris, “his personal biases (and) disdain for the Habsburg Emperor … certainly transpired into these interactions”. Jefferson’s role “enabled him to delay, stall, and ultimately derail the negotiations”, causing “great annoyance on the Habsburg side, exacerbated by the discovery of the conclusion and then deceitful concealment of the treaty with Prussia by Jefferson”.²⁷ With the breakdown came the demise of Beelen’s mission and bankruptcies of the “transatlantic mercantile ventures”, wrecking direct trade which “never achieved a critical mass”. Vienna’s interest faded so that “Jefferson’s delayed negotiations had placed the nail on the coffin of the relationship”.²⁸

While the Napoleonic Wars distracted the Europeans for a long time (and changed Europe forever, with the old “Roman” Empire (“of the German Nation”) deceased and succeeded by an Austrian Empire), the United States continued to explore business opportunities overseas.²⁹ Baron Bartholomäus Stürmer, designated to represent Austria at Philadelphia, served as consul-general from 1818 to 1820.³⁰ Later, Stürmer, who had accepted the job in the United States reluctantly, moved on to Brazil where the Austrian Emperor’s daughter Leopoldina married the Braganza heir Pedro who was to become emperor. However, naming a religious foundation in the United States after this woman (Leopoldinenstiftung³¹) and making it dedicated to the Catholic proselytizing of the American Indian did not imply Austria would seek righteousness and glory. She just answered requests from the Cincinnati Diocese directed also to France.³²

Stürmer’s successor was Baron Louis Lederer; Metternich, in compliance with the American focus on commerce, selected him because of his knowledge of the English language and his business experience as manager of the English export firm of Strange & Company at Cadiz, Spain. Lederer did not reside in the political center of the country but in New York. However, he was supposed to report to the consul-general in Philadelphia, but since this post remained vacant for 15 years, Lederer was Austria’s lone representative in the United States for quite a while. In 1829, he brought about a Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Austria and the United States, and Vienna made him consul-general. When the Habsburg court appointed a diplomat for the first time in 1838, Wenzel Mareschall, Lederer resigned but stayed in New York until his death in 1842.³³

It is interesting to study the instructions Lederer was given from Vienna both when he first arrived and when he worked on the treaty nine years later. In 1820, the Habsburg court mainly wished to be treated equally with England and to gather more information on steamships to decide whether this means of transportation should be introduced to the monarchy as well. Two issues were missing, migration and image work. The first had been omitted because emigration from Austria to the United States had not taken off yet; the few who did migrate were not required to register with the Austrian consul in America.³⁴ Vienna did not mind if migrants found their luck in a new home and did not consider returning. Also, the Empire was not prepared to take back people who were disappointed or had become impoverished, and Vien...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 A brief history of relations between Vienna and Washington
• 2 Mass migration from (old) Austria to the United States
• 3 United States neutrality or no way back for Austrians
• 4 Diplomatic feud or countdown to disaster (April 1917–October 1918)
• 5 Paris 1919
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index of Names