The Habsburgs

Dynasty, Culture and Politics

Paula Sutter Fichtner

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781780232744
• eBook ISBN: 9781780233147
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

The death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 not only sparked the beginning of World War I—it also initiated the beginning of the end of the six-hundred-year-old Habsburg dynasty, which fell apart when the war ended, changing Europe forever. But how did the Habsburgs come to play such a decisive role in the fate of the continent? Paula Sutter Fichtner seeks to answer this question in this comprehensive account of the longest-lived European empire. Tracing the origins of the house of Habsburg to the tenth century, Fichtner identifies the principal characters in the story and explores how they were able to hold together such a culturally diverse and multiethnic state for so many centuries. She takes account of the intertwining of culture, politics, and society, revealing the strategies that enabled the dynasty's extraordinarily long life: its dazzling mix of cultural propaganda, public performances, and cunning political maneuvering. She points out the irony that one of the crowd-pleasing performances that had enabled the Habsburg success—visiting beds of the injured—led to Ferdinand's death and the empire's downfall. Breathing fresh life into the history of the Habsburg reign, this accessible and authoritative history charts one of the pivotal foundation stories of modern Europe.

References

Introduction

1 Geoffrey Wheatcroft, ‘Hello to All That’, New York Review of Books, LVIII/2 (2012), p. 32; obituary of Paul Fussell, New York Times, 24 May 2012, A29.

2 Alan Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 2nd edn (Harlow, 2001), p. 3. The Spanish side of the Habsburg story is well told and illustrated in Andrew Wheatcroft, The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire (New York, 1995).

3 For example, Gary Cohen, ‘Nationalist Politics and the Dynamics of State and Society in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914’, Central European History, XL (2007), pp. 241–78; Peter Urbanitsch, ‘Pluralist Myth and Nationalist Realities: The Dynastic Myth of the Habsburg Monarchy – a Futile Exercise in the Creation of an Identity?’, Austrian History Yearbook, XXXV (2004), pp. 101–14; Ernst Bruckmüller, ‘Was There a “Habsburg Society” in Austria–Hungary?’, Austrian History Yearbook, XXXVII (2006), pp. 1–16; Pieter M. Judson, ‘L’Autriche-Hongrie était-elle un empire?’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, LXIII/3(2008), pp. 164, 565–6, 583. See also, more generally, Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA, 2007) and Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, NY, 2008). A good summary of these arguments is Pieter M. Judson and Tara Zahra, ‘Sites of Indifference to Nationhood’, Austrian History Yearbook, XLIII (2012), pp. 21–7.

4 Daniel L. Unowsky, The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism: Imperial Celebrations in Habsburg Austria, 1848–1916 (West Lafayette, IN, 2006), is exemplary. See also Nancy Wingfield, Flag Wars and Stone Saints: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech (Cambridge, MA, 2007), pp. 108, 110–11, which has a vivid account of these occasions in nineteenth-century Bohemia.

5 See the commentaries in Jutta Schumann, Die Andere Sonne: Kaiserbild und Medienstrategien im Zeitalter Leopolds I (Berlin, 2003), pp. 16–17, 19–20, 25, 32, 34; Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen [1992] (Munich, 2007), pp. 17, 19–21, 29, 133, 141; Jan and Aleida Assmann, Schrift und Gedächtnis: Beiträge zur Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation (Munich, 1983), pp. 265, 267, 270, 275–6; Jan and Aleida Assmann, ‘Schrift und Kultur’, in Zwischen Festtag und Alltag: Zehn Beiträge zum Thema ‘Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit’, ed. Wolfgang Raible (Tübingen, 1988), pp. 29–33.

6 Larry Wolff, The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (Stanford, CA, 2010), pp. 1, 4.

1 Getting Started

1 Sabine Weiss, ‘Das Bildungswesen im spätmittelalterlichen Österreich. Ein Überblick’, in Die Österreichische Literatur: Ihr Profil von den Anfängen im Mittelalter bis ins 18. Jahrhundert (1050–1750), ed. Herbert Zeman (Graz, 1986), I/1, p. 228.

2 Friedrich Krieger, Rudolf von Habsburg (Darmstadt, 2003), pp. 32–7, 59, 63, 67–9, 78–9; Günther Hödl, Habsburg und Österreich, 1273–1493: Gestalten und Gestalt des österreichischen Mittelalters (Vienna, 1988), pp. 19–20.

3 Krieger, Rudolf, pp. 3–5, 55–8, 99; Thomas Ebendorfer, Chronicon Austriae, Scriptores Rerum Austriacarum, ed. R.D.P. Hieronymus Pez (Leipzig, 1725), II, col. 913.

4 Krieger, Rudolf, pp. 78, 99, 108; Jíří Kuthan, Premysl Ottokar II. König Bauherr und Mäzen: Höfische Kunst im 13. Jahrhundert, trans. Petronilla Cemus, Lenka Reinerová and Ursel Sedmidubská (Vienna, 1996), pp. 14, 16, 34–7.

5 Kuthan, Ottokar, p. 17.

6 Krieger, Rudolf, p. 99.

7 Kuthan, Ottokar, pp. 27, 56–87; Mario Schwarz, ‘Die Baukunst in Österreich zur Regierungszeit Ottokars II. Premysl (1251–1276)’, in Ottakar-Forschungen, ed. Max Weltin and Andreas Kusternig (Vienna, 1979), pp. 453–8; Heinrich Appelt, ‘Verfassungsgeschichtliche Grundlagen der Herrschaft König Ottokars von Böhmen über die österreichischen Länder’, in Ottokar-Forschungen, p. xiv.

8 Krieger, Rudolf, pp. 127–54.

9 Max Weltin, ‘König Rudolf und die österreichischen Landherren’, in Rudolf von Habsburg 1273–1291, ed. Egon Boshof and Franz-Reiner Erkens (Cologne, 1993), pp. 106–9.

10 Krieger, Rudolf, pp. 131–7, 143; Max Weltin, ‘Landesherr und Landherren: Zur Herrschaft Ottokars II. Přemysl in Österreich’, Ottokar-Forschungen, pp. 168, 186, 197, 215.

11 Krieger, Rudolf, pp. 145–6, 149–150. Cf. Maurice Keen, Chivalry [1984] (New Haven, CT, 2005), p. 169.

12 Krieger, Rudolf, pp. 151–3, 238, 254; Kuthan, Ottokar, pp. 7–8, 34.

13 Hödl, Habsburg, pp. 25–6.

14 Krieger, Rudolf, pp. 243–6.

15 Ernst Bruckmüller, Sozialgeschichte Österreichs, 2nd edn (Vienna, 2001), pp. 63–83, 72–4; Appelt, ‘Grundlagen’, pp. ix–xii; Weltin, ‘König Rudolf’, pp. 110–11, 113, 115.

16 Friedrich Polleross, ‘From the exemplum virtutis to the Apotheosis: Hercules as an Identification Figure in Portraiture: An Example of the Adoption of Classical Forms of Representation’, in Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation, ed. Allan Ellenius (Oxford, 1998), pp. 37–52; Fernando Checa Cremades, ‘Monarchic Liturgies and the “Hidden King”: The Function and Meaning of Spanish Royal Portraiture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Iconography, p. 98

17 Thomas Brockmann, ‘Das Bild des Hauses Habsburg in der dynastienahen Historiographie um 1700’, in Bourbon-Habsburg-Oranien: Konkurrierende Modelle im dynastischen Europa um 1700, ed. Christoph Kampmann, Katharina Krause, Eva-Bettina Krems and Anuschka Tischer (Cologne, 2008), p. 30; Peter Burke, ‘The Demise of Mythologies’, in Iconography, pp. 245–54.

18 Krieger, Rudolf, pp. 229, 234, 236, 239–40, 250.

19 Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Habsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven, CT, 1993), pp. 208, 222.

20 Krieger, Rudolf, pp. 3–5; Thomas M. Martin, ‘Das Bild Rudolfs von Habsburg als “Bürgerkönig” in Chronistik, Dichtung und moderner Historiographie’, in Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte, CXII (1976), p. 215.

21 Ibid., pp. 204, 207, 209 and n. 4, 210–11, 229, 250.

22 Ibid., pp. 216–20, 223–6.

23 Brockmann, ‘Bild’, pp. 30–34; Harald Kleinschmidt, ‘Das ostasienbild Maximilians I: Die Bedeutung Ostasiens in der Kaiserpropaganda um 15...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Political Chronology
• Usage
• Introduction
• ONE Getting Started
• TWO The Habsburgs Regroup
• THREE Champions of Faith and Family
• FOUR New Tactics for New Times
• FIVE Revolution, Recovery, Revolution
• SIX Constructing Commitment
• SEVEN Alternative Narratives, Competing Visions
• EIGHT Bosnia and After
• NINE One Goodbye, Several Farewells
• Genealogy: The House of Habsburg
• References
• Select Bibliography
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Index