Metternich

Strategist and Visionary

Wolfram Siemann, Daniel Steuer

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780674743922
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674245907
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

A compelling new biography that recasts the most important European statesman of the first half of the nineteenth century, famous for his alleged archconservatism, as a friend of realpolitik and reform, pursuing international peace.

Metternich has a reputation as the epitome of reactionary conservatism. Historians treat him as the archenemy of progress, a ruthless aristocrat who used his power as the dominant European statesman of the first half of the nineteenth century to stifle liberalism, suppress national independence, and oppose the dreams of social change that inspired the revolutionaries of 1848. Wolfram Siemann paints a fundamentally new image of the man who shaped Europe for over four decades. He reveals Metternich as more modern and his career much more forward-looking than we have ever recognized.

Clemens von Metternich emerged from the horrors of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Siemann shows, committed above all to the preservation of peace. That often required him, as the Austrian Empire's foreign minister and chancellor, to back authority. He was, as Henry Kissinger has observed, the father of realpolitik. But short of compromising on his overarching goal Metternich aimed to accommodate liberalism and nationalism as much as possible. Siemann draws on previously unexamined archives to bring this multilayered and dazzling man to life. We meet him as a tradition-conscious imperial count, an early industrial entrepreneur, an admirer of Britain's liberal constitution, a failing reformer in a fragile multiethnic state, and a man prone to sometimes scandalous relations with glamorous women.

Hailed on its German publication as a masterpiece of historical writing, Metternich will endure as an essential guide to nineteenth-century Europe, indispensable for understanding the forces of revolution, reaction, and moderation that shaped the modern world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• A Note on the Frontispiece
• Translator’s Note
• Preface to the English-Language Edition
• Introduction
• 1. Origins: Family Ties and the Rise of the Metternichs
• 2. Metternich’s Generation: Ancien Régime and Enlightenment, 1773–1792
• 3. A Double Crisis: Empire and Revolution, 1789–1801
• 4. Between Peace and War: Life as an Ambassador, 1801–1806
• 5. World War: Outset and Intensification, 1806–1812
• 6. World War: Climax and Crisis, 1813
• 7. World War: Catastrophe and Resolution, 1814
• 8. The End of an Era and a New Beginning for Europe: The Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815
• 9. Connoisseur of Women and Head of the Entail
• 10. The Construction of a New Beginning: Reform and Reconstruction, 1815–1818
• 11. Defensive Security Policies: Averting Threats under the Vienna System, 1815–1829
• 12. The Economist: Metternich as a Capitalist with a Social Conscience
• 13. The Spring of Nations amid Poverty, 1830–1847
• 14. The Organization of Rule: Power Centers, Networks, Interests, Intrigues
• 15. Revolution, Escape, Exile, 1848–1851
• 16. At the Observatory: Twilight Years in Vienna, 1851–1859
• Epilogue: Metternich as a Postmodern Character in Early Modernity
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Illustration Credits
• Index