The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy

By Oscar Jaszi

The main factor which destroyed the Habsburg Monarchy was the problem of nationality and its dissolution was hastened, but not caused, by World War I. Oscar Jászi spent twenty years studying the dangers that threatened this monarchy but his practical plans for averting these dangers were not given a hearing until it was too late. This book was the culmination of Mr. Jászi’s theoretical and practical activity and was enthusiastically received when first published in 1929.

“It is not only effective and dramatic narrative, it is also political science of the first order.”—Harold J. Laski

“The work is a liberal education in Central European politics.”—Henry C. Alsberg, The Nation

“There have been many books written on the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but there is none which goes so deeply into the causes…in this pitiless yet pitiful analysis, rigorously buttressed with statistics, the tragedy is described without bitterness but with deep feeling.”—The Manchester Guardian

• Language: English
• Publisher: Borodino Books
• Release date: Sep 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789122329

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Text originally published in 1929 under the same title.

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STUDIES IN THE MAKING OF CITIZENS

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE HABSBURG MONARCHY

By OSCAR JÁSZI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

EDITOR’S PREFACE 5

PREFACE 9

REMARKS ON THE LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECT 12

PART I — SOME PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 14

CHAPTER I — THE PROBLEM 14

CHAPTER II — THE DISSOLUTION OF THE HABSBURG MONARCHY WAS NOT A MECHANICAL BUT AN ORGANIC PROCESS 16

CHAPTER III — THE DOUBLE WAR OF THE HABSBURG MONARCHY 22

CHAPTER IV — ESSENCE AND POSSIBILITIES OF CIVIC EDUCATION 31

PART II — THE HISTORICAL ATMOSPHERE 34

CHAPTER I — DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE WESTERN NATIONAL STATES AND THE HABSBURG EMPIRE 34

CHAPTER II — THE HABSBURG EMPIRE AS A FAMILY ESTATE (FIDEI COMMISSUM) 36

CHAPTER III — THE FATA MORGANA OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 38

CHAPTER IV — THE UNIFYING FORCE OF GERMAN COLONIZATION 40

CHAPTER V — COHESION CREATED BY THE TURKISH PRESSURE 42

CHAPTER VI — ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE DYNASTY AND THE OPPRESSED CLASSES OF THE PEOPLE 45

CHAPTER VII — THE FIGHT OF THE ABSOLUTISM AGAINST THE ESTATES 47

CHAPTER VIII — THE INTRODUCTION OF THE SPANISH TERROR 50

CHAPTER IX — MERCANTILISM AND PRAGMATICA SANCTIO 56

CHAPTER X — THE SYSTEM OF DOUCE VIOLENCE 60

CHAPTER XI — THE SYSTEM OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ABSOLUTISM 64

CHAPTER XII — BULWARK AGAINST THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 71

CHAPTER XIII — REVOLUTION AND MILITARY ABSOLUTISM 81

CHAPTER XIV — THE STABILIZATION OF ABSOLUTISM: THE SYSTEM BACH 92

CHAPTER XV — EXPERIMENTATION IN CONSTITUTIONALISM: THE DIPLOMA AND THE PATENT 95

CHAPTER XVI — THE PERIOD OF SHAM-CONSTITUTIONALISM: THE DUALIST SYSTEM 98

CHAPTER XVII — DAMNOSA HEREDITAS 109

CHAPTER XVIII — A HISTORY OF CONFLICTING SENTIMENTS 117

PART III — THE CENTRIPETAL FORCES: THE EIGHT PILLARS OF INTERNATIONALISM 119

CHAPTER I — THE CENTRIPETAL FORCES AND THEIR GENERAL DYNAMICS 119

CHAPTER II — THE DYNASTY 121

CHAPTER III — THE ARMY 126

CHAPTER IV — THE ARISTOCRACY 133

CHAPTER V — THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 139

CHAPTER VI — BUREAUCRACY 146

CHAPTER VII — CAPITALISM AND THE JEWRY 152

CHAPTER VIII — SOCIALISM 158

CHAPTER IX — THE TRAGEDY OF FREE TRADE 165

PART IV — THE CENTRIFUGAL FORCES: THE DRAMA OF THE GROWING NATIONAL DISINTEGRATION 189

CHAPTER I — THE BOOKS OF SIBYL 189

CHAPTER II — MORBUS LATIFUNDII 193

CHAPTER III — THE STRUGGLE OF THE CROWNS 210

CHAPTER IV — NATIONAL AWAKENING 217

PART V — THE DYNAMICS OF THE CENTRIFUGAL FORCES 233

CHAPTER I — THE DISTRIBUTION OF NATIONS AND THE GERMAN-MAGYAR HEGEMONY 233

CHAPTER II — THE CHIEF TENDENCY OF THE AUSTRIAN NATIONAL STRUGGLES: THE MOVE TOWARD NATIONAL EQUALITY 245

CHAPTER III — THE CHIEF TENDENCY OF THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL STRUGGLES: THE MOVE TOWARD A UNIFIED NATIONAL STATE 258

CHAPTER IV — THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THE AUSTRIAN AND THE HUNGARIAN SYSTEM 296

CHAPTER V — HUNGARY VERSUS AUSTRIA 300

CHAPTER VI — CROATIA VERSUS HUNGARY 314

PART VI — THE DANGER OF IRREDENTA 322

CHAPTER I — GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE PROBLEM 322

CHAPTER II — THE GERMAN SEPARATISM 326

CHAPTER III — THE TRUE IRREDENTAS 334

CHAPTER IV — THE JUGO-SLAV IRREDENTA AND THE ROAD TOWARD THE WAR 341

PART VII — CONSCIOUS EFFORTS IN CIVIC EDUCATION 363

CHAPTER I — OBSTACLES TO CIVIC EDUCATION 363

CHAPTER II — THE AUSTRIAN SYSTEM OF CIVIC EDUCATION 365

CHAPTER III — THE HUNGARIAN SYSTEM OF CIVIC EDUCATION 369

CHAPTER IV — DYNASTIC PATRIOTISM VERSUS NATIONAL PATRIOTISM 375

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 379

BIBLIOGRAPHY 384

I. GENERAL 384

II. HISTORICAL 387

III. ECONOMIC 392

IV. NATIONALITIES AND THEIR STRUGGLES 395

V. POLITICAL 398

VI. MEMOIRS, BIOGRAPHIES, AND PERSONAL REMINISCENCES 400

VII. CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS 403

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 406

DEDICATION

TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER

DR. FRANCIS JÁSZI

A PHYSICIAN ON THE MAGYAR-RUMANIAN BORDER, WHO CONVINCED ME IN MY EARLY CHILDHOOD THAT ANY PUBLIC POLICY NOT DIRECTED BY MORAL PRINCIPLES IS ONLY A FORM OF EXPLOITATION

….Speaking generally, there is something peculiar in national hatred. We always find it strongest and most vehement on the lowest stage of culture. But there is a stage where it totally disappears and where one stands, so to say, above the nations and feels the good fortune or distress of his neighbor people as if it had happened to his own…..

GOETHE

EDITOR’S PREFACE

This study of civic education is one of a series of similar analyses of a variety of states. Broadly speaking, the common purpose of these inquiries has been that of examining objectively the systems of civic education in a group of states, of determining the broad trends of civic training in these modern nations, and of indicating possibilities in the further development and control of civic education. In two of these cases, Italy and Russia, striking experiments are now being made in the organization of new types of civic loyalty. Germany, England, the United States, and France present instances of powerful modern states and the development of types of civic cohesion. Switzerland and Austria-Hungary are employed as examples of the difficulty experienced in reconciling a central political allegiance with divergent and conflicting racial and religious elements.

The series includes the following volumes:

Soviet Russia, by Professor Samuel N. Harper, Professor of Russian Language and Institutions in the University of Chicago.

Great Britain, by Professor John M. Gaus, Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin,

Austria-Hungary, by Professor Oscar Jászi, formerly of Budapest University, now Professor of Political Science in Oberlin College.

The United States, by Professor Carl Brinkmann, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Heidelberg.

Italy: Part I. by Professor Herbert W. Schneider, Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University, and Shepherd B. Clough.

Germany, by Mr. Paul Kosok, New York City,

Switzerland, by Professor Robert C. Brooks, Professor of Political Science in Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

France, by Professor Carleton J. H. Hayes, Professor of History in Columbia University. (This is a part of the Columbia University series of Studies in Post-War France and is included here because of its intimate relation to the other volumes in the series.)

Civic Attitudes in American Textbooks, by Dr. Bessie L. Pierce, Professor of History in the State University of Iowa.

Induction into Citizenship, by Dr. Elizabeth Weber, Professor of Political Science, Hunter College, New York City.

Comparative Civic Education, by Professor Charles E. Merriam, Professor of Political Science in the University of Chicago.

Wide latitude has been given and taken by the individual collaborators in this study, with the understanding, however, (1) that as a minimum there would be included in each volume an examination of the social bases of political cohesion and (2) that the various mechanisms of civic education would be adequately discussed. There is inevitably a wide variation in point of view, method of approach, and in execution of the project as investigators differ widely in aptitude, experience, and environment.

Of the various investigators the questions may be asked: What part do the social groupings play in the spirit of the state? What is the attitude of the economic groups which for this purpose may be considered under certain large heads, as the attitude of the business element, of the agricultural group, or of labor? What is the relation of the racial groups toward the political group whose solidarity is in question? Do they tend to integrate or disintegrate the state? What is the position of the religious factors in the given society, the Catholic, the Protestant, the Jewish? How are they concerned to loyalty toward the political unit? What is the place of the regional groupings in the political unit. Do they develop special tendencies alone or in company with other types of groupings already mentioned? What is the relation of these competing loyalties to each other?

It cannot be assumed that any of these groups have a special attraction or aversion toward government in general; and the analysis is not conducted with any view of establishing a uniformity of interest or attachment in any type of group, but rather of indicating the social composition of the existing political units and authorities. It may well be questioned whether there is any abstract loyalty, political or otherwise. These political loyalties are determined by concrete interests, modified by survivals that no longer fit the case and by aspirations not yet realized. The cohesion is a resultant of conflicting forces, or a balance of existing counterweights, a factor of the situation. All these factors may change and the balance may be the same, or one may change slightly and the whole balance may be overthrown. It is the integration of interests that counts, not the special form or character of any one of them.

Among the various approaches to civic education which it is hoped to analyze are the schools, the role of governmental service® and officials, the place of the political parties, and the function of special patriotic organizations; or, from another point of view, the use of traditions in building up civic cohesion, the place of political symbolism, the relation of language, literature, and the press to civic education, the position occupied by locality in the construction of a political loyalty; and, finally, it is hoped that an effective analysis may be made of competing group loyalties rivaling the state either within or without.

In these groups there is much overlapping. It would be possible to apply any one or all of the last-named categories to any or all of the first. Thus the formal school system may and does utilize language and literature, or symbolism, or love of locality, or make use of important traditions. Symbolism and traditions may and do overlap—in fact, must if they are to serve their purpose; while love of locality and language may be and are interwoven most intimately.

Intricate and difficult of comprehension as some of these patterns are, they lie at the basis of power; and control systems, however crude, must constantly be employed and invented to deal with these situations. The device may be as simple as an ancient symbol or as complicated as a formal system of school training, but in one form or other these mechanisms of cohesion are constantly maintained.

In the various states examined, these devices will be traced and compared. The result will by no means attain the dignity of exact measurement but will supply a rough tracing of outlines of types and patterns in different cities. It is hoped, however, that these outlines will be sufficiently clear to set forth some of the main situations arising in the process of political control and to raise important questions regarding the further development of civic education.

It may be suggested that the process by which political cohesion is produced must always be considered with reference to other loyalties toward other groups in the same society. Many of the devices here described are common to a number of competing groups and can be more clearly seen in their relation to each other, working in co-operation or competition, as the situation may be. The attitude of the ecclesiastical group or the economic group, or the racial or cultural group, or any of them, profoundly influences the nature and effect of the state’s attempt to solidify political loyalty; and the picture is complete only when all the concurrent or relevant factors are envisaged.

These devices are not always consciously employed although they are spoken of here as if they were. It often happens that these instrumentalities are used without the conscious plan of anyone in authority. In this sense it might be better to say that these techniques are found rather than willed. At any rate, they exist and are operating.

These eight or nine techniques are only rough schedules or classifications of broad types of cohesive influences. They are not presented as accurate analyses of the psychology of learning or teaching the cohesive process of political adherence. They presuppose an analysis of objectives which has not been made, and they presuppose an orderly study of the means of applying objectives; and this also has not been worked out in any of the states under consideration.

Professor Jászi’s study of Austria-Hungary is an analysis of a tragic failure in civic cohesion, of fatal inability to develop a central political loyalty of a type comparable to that found in many contemporary and competing states. The contrast between this case and the nations here examined is a significant one. When, however, a comparison is made with Switzerland, likewise obliged to blend together diverse nationalities, localisms, and religions, the differences are even more striking. There are, of course, wide variations between the social background of the Swiss state and the Habsburg empire, but there are also notable differences in the techniques employed for the development of a central loyalty and a common morale; and some of these are highly useful for the analysis of the process of civic education and cohesion. The flow of blind social forces may be discerned in Austria-Hungary, but we may also observe the deliberate policies of omission and commission, alternately strengthening and weakening the bonds of national allegiance and unity. And in the interplay of these social forces and techniques are revealed glimpses into the nature of political aggregation.

Professor Jászi’s work is based on a lifelong familiarity with the Habsburg problem, including his connections with the University of Kolozsvár, later with that of Budapest, his experiment in civic training as Director of the Free School of Social Sciences, in the same city, his membership in the last cabinet of the declining empire as Minister of Racial Minorities, his recent laborious study of the specific subject of civic education in the Habsburg state, and his broad reflection on the whole problem from the more detached point of view of a Professor of Political Science in Oberlin College.

Professor Jászi approaches the question as a Hungarian, it is true, but with an exceptional breadth of view and depth of insight, and without local chauvinism in his attitude. In a state comprising five principal groups, it is difficult to find anyone whose knowledge of all of them is uniform and equally adequate. Professor Jászi’s attitude is only defined and above board—the general point of view of a scholar and a Hungarian liberal. His analysis of the forces of civic integration and disintegration represents a lifetime of observation and reflection, and as presented is well worth the consideration of all students of political processes.

CHARLES E. MERRIAM

PREFACE

When the task of describing the mass-psychological process of the disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy and of the failure of the conscious elaboration of a common will was tendered me, I was hesitant for a long time in accepting it. Before all a motive of a rather sentimental character was in my way, expressed by the words of Aeneas: Infandum, Regina, jubes renovare dolorem. Besides I clearly felt that such an undertaking would mean the work of many years and the energies of a man equally qualified as a historian, a sociologist, and an economist. How could one dare to do such a work in a comparatively short time without being an expert in all these fields? My doubts, however, were counterbalanced by the consideration of a single advantage which I possess over many of the writers who might be appointed to the task: I lived through, in a conscious and active way, the last quarter of a century of the Dual Monarchy and foresaw its dangers and difficulties, and amidst an apathetic or hostile world, tried to convince my compatriots that without deep organic reforms (reforms in the agrarian constitution, in public administration and education, in the national organization of the various peoples) the whole edifice would collapse. And, finding that my feeble voice was constantly drowned by the beneficiaries of the old system, two years before the War, in a last effort, I tried, in a rather comprehensive book,{1} to describe the diagnosis and cure of the national pathology. The present volume is in a sense the continuation of my former book: it shows how the experiences of the last decade of the Monarchy were the logical consequences of deep social and economic causes previously analyzed. Therefore, that of which I treat in the following pages is not books but men; the processes which I elucidate are not theories but social realities.

There was also another consideration which encouraged me to accept the challenge. During my lifetime I have witnessed a twofold tragedy. Not only will men not understand social realities which are for them disagreeable or disadvantageous when they face them, but also, a posteriori, they try to get rid of the painful past experiences. There is a tendency to falsify history in order to absolve the crimes of the past and to obtain transitory gains among the difficulties of an adverse situation. Both the victorious and the vanquished nations show this marked tendency. The so-called War Guilt literature is an evidence of the whitewashing of facts in order to alleviate the responsibilities of the past and to obtain momentary diplomatic advantages. It is an almost intolerable spectacle to see how the four or five great lessons of the terrible catastrophe are obscured and distorted by the leaders of a world which continues along the vicious road of the past. And a falsified history always means envenomed actions and new opportunities for armed conflicts. I feel it my duty to put into a correct light that part of the tragedy through which I lived.

Perhaps the reader will say that such a pragmatic position is dangerous in itself for the task which I am undertaking. I think it is not, provided it is combined with a sufficient amount of impartiality and universal sympathy. Even before the war, but after it still more completely, I had grown away from the old local patriotisms of Europe. At present there does not exist for me an isolated Hungarian problem; and, though with an unbroken loyalty to my own, I have the same sympathy for all the suffering peoples of the Danube Basin.

But here a more serious objection may arise, on the part of those who would discredit the reliability of my attitude. They will say a man living in exile for a decade after having lost his cause will inevitably have the tendency to extol his own point of view and misrepresent that of his adversaries. However, there are two considerations which will absolve me of this charge. The one is that the principles and conclusions which I advocate in the present book are not the results of a belated wisdom, for I can demonstrate that I maintained the same principles and conclusions for the last two decades before the collapse. The other is that there is nothing eccentric or startling in my conclusions. As I emphasize in my bibliography and explain in my book, my chief conclusions and principles are in entire harmony with those of the best thinkers of the Monarchy, who for the last three generations have been occupied with the same problem. What I did is scarcely more than to make an organic synthesis and a many-sided elucidation of the efforts and opinions of those whom I regard as the deepest observers of the Habsburg drama. There are only two points concerning which I claim a stricter originality in my researches. The one is the analysis of the dissolving economic forces of the Monarchy. The other is the elucidation of the mass-psychological situation in Hungary.

There is a further argument which I would adduce to demonstrate the impartiality of my book. Fate ordered that I should be, if not an dessus de la mêlée, at least outside of it. I was compelled to live outside of my country for the last decade because I had a small share in the endeavor to democratize Hungary and to remold the old feudal state into a confederation of free nations. This effort failed completely, and, as far as sociological prognostications can be indulged in, I regard my present position as final and unchangeable for the remainder of my life. I have no longer any personal interest, except that of my ideals, in the Danube region, having become a humble worker in the great American Republic in one of its historical colleges which has always been associated with the idea of personal liberty and international solidarity. This book is therefore neither an apology nor a program, but a sincere effort to elucidate a problem which still deeply influences the future of Europe and of mankind. It may also become useful in a coming age, when the present nationalistic dementia will ebb, as a kind of political testament.

Some minor remarks may be added. One of the greatest shortcomings of the present volume is the fact that among the many languages of the former Monarchy I read only German, Hungarian, Italian and Rumanian whereas the Slavic literature I know only through translations and excerpts made by my friends. However, this serious drawback is somewhat compensated by the fact that in consequence of my policy of national conciliation I lived always in good and close personal contact with many leaders of the Slavic nations, who honored my peaceful endeavors with their confidence.

The other point which I beg to mention is an apology for the great number of quotations which I use throughout the book. Though I feel the distastefulness of too many quotations, in the present book I was compelled to resort to them. As my task was the interpretation of certain mass-psychological currents, I found the necessity of demonstrating that I do not express in the analysis of the social realities personal opinions but widely spread mass conceptions. However, in order to avoid a superabundance of footnotes, I included only such references as seemed to me very important or of a controversial character.

I would also mention that the manuscript of the present book was finished by contractual engagement in the fall of 1927, but difficulties outside of my control delayed its publication. Therefore, to the literature published after this date I could only refer in notes and with occasional remarks so as not to destroy the unity of the composition.

Finally, I would like to express my personal thanks to those who helped me in my task. Professor Charles E. Merriam, of the University of Chicago, Professor Karl F. Geiser, of Oberlin College, and Professor Robert J. Kerner, of the University of California, gave me some important suggestions and expurgated many Hungarianisms in my style. My good friend Madame Anna Lesznai (Vienna) offered me some excellent hints concerning the social psychology of the last generation. Two other Viennese friends, Arnold Daniel and Dr. Joseph Redei, sent me valuable excerpts from the libraries. Besides, the former assisted me with keen and original observations in the economic field. I am sorry that I cannot express publicly my acknowledgments to some of my Budapest friends, for reasons which are perfectly clear. More than anyone else I wish to thank my wife, whose co-operation and care I felt on many pages of this book.

OSCAR JÁSZI

OBERLIN COLLEGE

March 1, 1929

REMARKS ON THE LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECT

The author of the present-volume has somewhat heretical opinions concerning the values of bibliographies. It seems to him that the power of our intellectual assimilation is as limited as that of our biological; that creative thoughts must have their natural growth, which too many references choke rather than promote; that literary footnotes are like a pedigree: they are more decorative than essential. As a matter of fact a detailed bibliography of the subject would be a book in itself. Concerning the Austrian part of the Monarchy, a careful bibliography was compiled by Richard Charmatz, the distinguished Austrian historian: Wegweiser durch die Literatur der österreichischen Geschichte (Stuttgart und Berlin, 1912). Concerning Hungary, a similar work was undertaken in the Appendix to Count Paul Teleki’s book, The Evolution of Hungary and Its Place in European History (New York, 1923), mostly from the pen of the noted Hungarian bibliographer, Mr. Charles Feleky.

Therefore, I offer only at the end of this volume a restricted list of books which either impressed me or will show the reader an opposite outlook on the situation. Generally I omitted, with few exceptions, those books in the foreign languages most inaccessible to English readers, namely those in the Hungarian, Rumanian, and the Slavic tongues. (Some few of these I inserted in translation.) Similarly, I omitted the so-called war literature, which has only an indirect connection with this book. An almost complete list of this will be found in R. W. Seton-Watson’s book Sarajevo (London, 1925) and in S. B. Fay’s comprehensive work on The Origins of the World War (New York, 1928).

However, in order to make the position of the present volume clearer, I would like to emphasize those authors and books of the following bibliography whose conception helped or influenced me mostly. Among the men of a previous generation, the remarkable statesman and diplomat, BARON VICTOR ANDRIAN-WERBURG analyzed in a masterly way the structure and the main tendencies of the Habsburg Monarchy. Later the keen and courageous historian, ANTON SPRINGER, realized the forces which would lead to the deadlock of the Empire. Among the responsible statesmen, the great economist and sociologist, A. E. F, SCHAFFLE, has shown more insight into the problem than any of the leading ministers of Austria. DR. ADOLF FISCHHOF, the brilliant representative of the great liberal generation of 1848, developed an acumen and discrimination in the deepest foundations of the Monarchy which was never surpassed. Among the Hungarian statesmen and publicists of the same period, the state philosophy of BARON JOSEPH EÖTVÖS is unique from the point of view both of breadth and penetration, whereas the prophetic vision of Louis KOSSUTH concerning the formation of a Danube federation inspired my speculations very much concerning the future. Within the narrow circle of the few faithful followers of the great tribune, it was Louis MOCSÁRY who, with an exceptional moral courage and independence, pointed out the right road for a half-blind generation.

Among my own contemporaries, on the Austrian side nobody has so much aroused my admiration as Professor Joseph Redlich, who, with an unrivaled mass of information and deepness of judgment, has unveiled the most intricate aspects of the Habsburg problem. Though I feel the point of view of Professor Victor Bibl too pro-German, I think his Der Zerfall Österreichs is the most complete and sincere historical description of the catastrophe. He was especially successful in the gathering of what was called unique facts concerning the historical forces of the past, and I often used his rich repertory of significant data. Another Austrian, a man of the higher bureaucracy, FRIEDRICH F. G. KLEINWAECHTER, wrote the best book concerning the psychology of the imperial administration and showed an unusual grasp of the problem of the irredentas. The artistic and moral side of the problem found a brilliant and sensitive exponent in the writings of the Viennese art critic and novelist HERMANN BAHR. I am also very appreciative for the remarkable works of two Austrian socialist leaders, DR. KARL RENNER and DR. OTTO BAUER, who with the one-sided strength of a revolutionary ideology of a new class have introduced fresh points of view into the stagnant waters of Austrian public life.

Among my Hungarian contemporaries, I wish to mention the original and independent work of BARON J. SZILLASSY, one of those rare diplomats who clearly visualized the relation between the inner and outer policy.

Among the foreigners who were in more intimate touch with the problems of the Monarchy, none saw the situation more penetratingly than HENRY WICKHAM STEED, R. W. SETON-WATSON, and LOUIS EISENMANN (all three, until the World War, convinced supporters of the Habsburg Monarchy and hoping for her rejuvenation).

Finally, I wish only to mention two authors who, though disconnected with my special problem, influenced the general trend of my argument. Though I disagree with certain conclusions and constructions of PROFESSOR CARLTON J. H. HAYES, I regard his studies on nationalism as an important contribution to the general problem. On the other hand, the fundamental inquiries of PROFESSOR FRANCIS OPPENHEIMER concerning the social consequences of the feudal system supported very much my own diagnosis of the downfall of the, Monarchy.

PART I — SOME PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

CHAPTER I — THE PROBLEM

Among those studies in which the University of Chicago has undertaken to investigate the evolution and the present state of civic education in the various countries of the world, the writer of this book has been given the charge of elucidating in detail that big, historical experiment which was carried on in the field of civic education within the limits of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In this vast empire, which concentrated more than fifty-one million inhabitants in an area of two hundred and sixty thousand square miles, were almost ten nations and twenty more or less divergent nationalities in political or moral bonds. These constituted two distinct states (Austria and Hungary), seventeen provinces or crownlands in Austria, an associated country with Hungary (Croatia-Slavonia), a separate body (city and harbor of Fiume) annexed to Hungary, and a province of colonial nature (Bosnia-Herzegovina)—all of them with distinct historical consciousness and more or less extended territorial autonomy. In this vast empire there was going on, during more than four hundred years, an effort to keep together this variegated mosaic of nations and people and to build up a kind of universal state, a supranational monarchy, and to fill it with the feeling of a common solidarity.

This experiment, which the greatest state of the European continent (leaving out of account Russia and the powers with colonies outside Europe) undertook with colossal military, economic, and moral forces through almost sixteen generations, was one of the greatest and most interesting attempts in world-history. Had this experiment been successful, it would have meant more from a certain point of view than all other efforts of state-building ever recorded. For, if the Habsburgs had been able really to unite those ten nations through a supranational consciousness into an entirely free and spontaneous co-operation, the empire of the Habsburgs would have surpassed the narrow limits of the nation state and would have proved to the world that it is possible to replace the consciousness of national unity by a consciousness of a state community. It would have proved that the same problem which Switzerland and Belgium have solved on a smaller scale among highly civilized nations under particular historical conditions should not be regarded as a historical accident, but that the same problem is perfectly solvable even on a large scale and among very heterogeneous cultural and national standards.

We can go even farther and say that this experiment of the Habsburgs would have signified a higher and more promising principle of evolution, not only compared with the old national states but also with the English and American kind of confederative state. For the British Empire and the United States are in reality a continuation of the old national type. In the United States the unity of the Anglo-Saxon culture and hegemony is uncontested, whereas the greatest part of the commonwealth of British nations is still under Anglo-Saxon leadership and the non-European stock of this commonwealth is scarcely beginning to participate in the political life of the whole organism. Neither the United States nor the British commonwealth can be regarded as a supranational type of state life.

And again, if the Austro-Hungarian state experiment had been really successful, the Habsburg monarchy would have solved on its territory the most fundamental problem of present Europe, which is also the problem of the League of Nations. How is it possible to unite national individualities of very divergent ideals and traditions in such a way that each of them can continue its own particular life, while at the same time limiting its national sovereignty enough to make a peaceful and effective international co-operation possible?

This historical experiment in the society of nations under the patronage of the Habsburgs has proved unsuccessful. The centripetal forces of a supranational consciousness were more and more disintegrated by the centrifugal forces of national particularisms. In the unnational and patrimonial body of the Habsburg empire there arose always more distinctly several differentiated national embryo states which, under the formidable birth-pangs of the World War, split the once unified framework of the monarchy into six distinct states.

In spite of the tragic collapse of the Habsburg experiment, this problem of state organization has still a great theoretical and practical importance. For the question is, whether the Danubian experiment was due to fail because it was in its essence an organic, almost a natural impossibility, or because it was only a consequence of factors depending on will and insight which could have been avoided by a more advanced statesmanship, a more clear-sighted policy, and a better-organized civic education. The answer to this question will determine almost sub specie aeternitatis the fate of all future experiments intending to unite various and antagonistic national wills into a harmonious international order, protecting and supplementing the interest of each nation. This problem is not only a problem of the remote future but the vital problem of those states which were established on the ruins of the Habsburg monarchy, for these new states are not unified nation states but states resulting from the co-operation of different national elements. At the same time our problem is closely connected with the general problem of Europe. The saving of that Continent, destroyed by the unbridled forces of nationalism, depends on whether or not we are compelled to accept national antagonisms as final necessities or whether we can eliminate these national rivalries or at least replace them by other methods.

We can even affirm that the unsuccessful experiment of the old Habsburg monarchy affects not only the European future but also those problems by which the Far East is menacing the European powers and the United States, because all these problems are intimately connected with a national conflict aggravated by racial and religious antagonisms.

CHAPTER II — THE DISSOLUTION OF THE HABSBURG MONARCHY WAS NOT A MECHANICAL BUT AN ORGANIC PROCESS

Before proceeding to examine the causes which made the attempt at consolidation of the Habsburg empire a failure, a word may be said in anticipation of objections that may be taken to my viewpoint. There will be those who will resolve this whole problem into a sham by asserting that the dissolution of the monarchy was not the result of inner forces, but that it was due exclusively to external factors which had nothing to do with the psychic and political structure of the empire. This point of view, which in a former book I termed the Habsburg legend and which is disseminated by the propaganda of very influential dynastic and feudal groups, represents the Habsburg monarchy as an innocent lamb, a victim of the antagonism of German and English imperialism which, arousing the World War, buried under its ruins the free and happy Danubian League of Nations.

This historical materialism à la Habsburg has been recently advanced by a naive and superficial historical and sociological literature which, investigating the responsibility for the World War, looks only on the diplomatic side of the problem, its chief interest consisting in the inquiry whether the world-catastrophe was actuated by the diplomatic maneuvers of Berchtold, Poincaré, Izvolsky, or Grey, or whether the Serb government did or did not have a previous knowledge of the murderous attack at Sarajevo. Such a point of view, which sees in the world-catastrophe exclusive personal intrigues and responsibilities, makes the real problem appear both shallow and obscure. For however great may be the crime of the individual politicians and statesmen in setting the date of the world-catastrophe, it is sufficiently clear that these men did not do more than detonate that mass of dynamite which the social and national unrest of Central Europe had piled up during the last hundred years.

Therefore, if we wish to understand history more clearly both from the point of view of the present and the future, and if we really try to follow a constructive policy of peace, we must have an end of that sentimental pacifism which considers all wars simply as the private affairs of criminal kings and diplomats or of capitalistic interests, and does not understand that the real causes of modern conflicts lie far deeper in the impeded evolutionary processes of the masses checked by stupid or criminal internal policies. I have no place here to amplify this point of view; I wish only to say that the warlike liquidation of the former Habsburg monarchy is no sane argument for the assertion that its collapse was purely a mechanical process and not the end of an organic development of almost two hundred years. We know not a single national or social crisis on a large scale in world-history which could have created a radical new equilibrium without awakening a series of international and warlike complications. This concatenation of the inner evolution and of outer warlike complications is also clearly demonstrated by the genesis of the other national states; and it is not a sane argument against the organic nature of English and French national unity to say that the movement toward unity of the moral and economic forces was very often protected in both countries by the militaristic and political centralization of the respective dynasties.

The dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy and the establishment of new national states on its ruins was, in its essence, the same process which in many other states of Europe led to the state integration of those peoples having a common language and culture. The same fundamental causes working for unity in the nationally homogeneous states worked toward dissolution in the ethnographical mosaic of the Habsburg empire. Even the World War can only be fully understood from this historical perspective. The detonator of the European explosion was perhaps a capitalistic one, but its violence would have been unimaginable without the powder magazine formed by the unsolved and accumulating national and social problems of Central and Eastern Europe.

In whatever manner we may regard the Habsburg problem—whether we analyze its historical atmosphere, the mass psychology of its people, or the international complications arising from its national and economic conditions—from all these points of view we must come to the same conclusion, namely, that this vast historical drama was not the result of diplomatic quarrels, but grew out of the inevitable logic of a long series of social causes.

This conception is not merely an a posteriori assertion, but it was already alive many years, even decades before in the consciousness of all those who were capable of regarding the problems of the Danubian monarchy with sufficient intellectual force. Many of the best statesmen, poets, scholars, and publicists were unanimous in the understanding that the empire of the Habsburgs had become an anachronistic impossibility, that it was doomed to death or at least could have been saved only by a major operation. Such and similar declarations, even well-founded sociological analyses, are so abundant that I must limit myself to the most characteristic and conspicuous ones.

Mickiewicz, the great Polish poet, almost a hundred years ago wrote the following startlingly clear-sighted description of the Habsburg empire:

This Empire counts thirty-four million inhabitants, but in reality it has no more than six million people; namely six million Germans keeping twenty-eight millions of other stocks in bondage. If one subtracts from these six millions the numbers of peasants, artisans, merchants, etc., who have no share at all in the government, there remain at most two million Austrians who rule all these masses. These two millions or rather their interests and opinions are represented approximately by a hundred families which are German, Hungarian, Polish, or Italian but which commonly speak French and have their capital largely outside the country. Using in their service two million bureaucrats and soldiers they rule through them the other thirty-two millions. That is a society modelled on the pattern of the English East Indian Company Ordinarily, people have a false idea of this Austrian Empire which never was a German, Hungarian or Slavish empire, but a kinship of all those who aim at drawing out the marrow of so many extensive countries rich in population.

Even more striking than this were the diagnoses and prognostications several times expressed by the great apostle and theoretical founder of the national idea, Giuseppe Mazzini. He clearly described the irresistible movement both of the Northern Slavs and the Southern Slavs toward unification. He prophesied that this movement, combined with the struggles for emancipation of the Greeks and the Rumanians, would inevitably destroy both the Austrian and the Turkish empires, these two serpents which paralyze the heart of Europe. Already in 1843 he wrote that in the Austrian Empire a movement of the Slav population is progressing (he even foresaw the unification of Bohemia and Moravia with the Slovak tribes of Hungary) for which nobody cares and which one day, united with our own efforts, will cancel Austria from the map of Europe…..{2}

In another direction, but scarcely less pessimistically, the situation of the monarchy was elucidated in 1822 by Charles Sealsfield, a brilliant German-American who fled before Austrian absolutism into the New World where he later wrote his powerful denunciation of the system of Metternich, an arraignment which is one of the most direct and penetrating documents of the empire of Emperor Francis, Sealsfield characterizes Austria as a big agglomeration of provinces, and describes with vivid colors the exasperated public mind of the Slav majority against the German absolutist rule. He writes:

One can even hear the Bohemians gnash their teeth if one begins to praise English liberty. They are filled with unspeakable sorrow if their own country is mentioned, the battles which they were obliged to fight for a strange cause, the armies for which they furnish the soldiers and bear the costs and which in reality serve for their oppression. They feel depressed that they exist for a dynasty which remained foreign to them and their wishes in spite of a rule of several hundred years, and which in its incapacity cares only how to subdue Bohemia and how to kill its national aims.{3}

This system, according to the opinion of Sealsfield, is untenable. The country as a unified whole is very near a crisis. Though it will not come to a general upheaval since the provinces are too sharply watched and the inner antagonisms are too great (the Bohemians would march against Hungary, the Poles against the Italians, and the Germans against both), the inner immorality of the system and its disregard for all loyal principles will ultimately destroy itself.

About ten years later the same facies hippocratica of the monarchy was seen by a Russian observer, by the Pan-Slav historian, Pogodin, who made several trips of investigation in Central Europe and gave an account of them to his government. He wrote:

The Slavs seem to be on the eve of a renaissance, the empire of the Danube must tremble even more than the Turkish empire in the face of twenty millions of a hostile race in its interior. Austria is a white sepulchre, an old tree which is rotten within, though it still bears leaves on the outside, but which the first blast of wind will uproot.

Again, ten years later, quite similar was the diagnosis of Charles Montalembert, the eminent French conservative statesman who spoke the following words (1846) on the tribune of the French Parliament: The Austrian monarchy is a bizarre composition of twenty nations which justice could have maintained but which injustice will push into dissolution.

The same mood is reflected in the opinions of many other foreign observers. Napoleon III called Austria a corpse with which nobody can make a contract. At the other pole of social life Karl Marx fixed the death-sentence of the Habsburg empire: The only circumstance, he wrote in 1860, which legitimates the existence of Austria since the middle of the eighteenth century is its resistance to the advances of Russia in eastern Europe….a resistance helpless, inconsequent, cowardly, but tough. And, following the trend of thought of his master, Frederick Engels in 1888 made the assertion that the destruction of Austria would have been a misfortune for European civilization before the approaching triumph of the Russian Revolution; after which its annihilation becomes unnecessary, for Austria, becoming superfluous, will go asunder by itself.

Similar considerations were expressed from a quite different angle by the noted French historian, Louis Leger, who on a pamphlet published in 1866 and treating the problem of Austria, alluding to the oppressed nationalities, put the following significative motto: Ave Caesar resurrecturi te salutant! And in a more comprehensive work, in 1879, he wrote this judgment: Abandoned to the blind egotism of the Germans and the Magyars the Habsburg Monarchy could not solve the problem of the East. She will witness its solution against its own interests.

It may be objected that the assertions quoted above emanate from strangers and from the enemies of the monarchy, but we shall soon see that the friends of the empire did not think otherwise than its enemies. Let us continue our survey with the opinion of two Hungarian statesmen of whom the first cannot be counted among the enemies of the dynasty. Count Stephen Széchenyi, the conservative promoter of the Hungarian renaissance, whom his noted political antagonist, Louis Kossuth, called the greatest Hungarian, prophesied as early as 1813 the dissolution of the monarchy. When, after the battle of Dresden, he was convalescing in a Prague hospital, he exposed before his officer colleagues the probable future of the monarchy. Of this conversation, a court spy (these men of Metternich filled even the hospitals) reported to Vienna that the count before an audience consisting chiefly of Prussian officers made the declaration that in spite of its victories, Austria would go asunder within a century because its parts are unequal and they separate more and more from each other.

Louis Kossuth, in 1881, was naturally more capable of describing accurately the pathology of the monarchy. The Viennese secret police sent an able agent provocateur to Turin in order to extract from the great man in exile his point of view concerning the international situation. The maneuver succeeded, and Kossuth, knowing not to whom he was speaking, gave his unveiled opinion concerning the future of Austria, which was later reported to the Viennese commissioner by the spy. According to this report, Kossuth predicted the approach of the Russian Revolution which he thought would be a deathknell for Austria. As Augustulus was the last Roman emperor, so Rudolphulus would be the last Habsburg. That was an allusion to Crown Prince Rudolph who died in 1889. It can scarcely be doubted that if the catastrophe of Meierling of which Rudolph became a victim had not happened and Rudolph had remained alive, the prophecy of Kossuth would have been literally realized.

But even the guiding spirits of Austria were not more optimistic over the situation of the monarchy. One may say, in terms of recent psychology, that the whole policy of Metternich stood under a dissolution complex, and this attitude fomented his almost monomanical struggle against democracy and liberalism. His wife, the princess Melanie, called him often the Cassandra of the monarchy, for he was saturated with alarming news about the collapse of the empire. It is quite natural that in such a milieu the judgment of the more liberal and freer spirits was even more emphatically unfavorable to the reigning system and its consequences. So in 1830, after the revolution of July, Grillparzer, the greatest poet of Austria, wrote the following really visionary lines:

The whole world will be strengthened by the unexpected change, only Austria will go to pieces by it. The shameless Machiavellism of the leaders who, in order that the reigning dynasty should remain the only connecting tie of the state, have fomented and nourished the reciprocal national antipathies of the separate provinces, is responsible for it. The Hungarian hates the Bohemian, the Bohemian hates the German, and the Italian hates them all, and as horses absurdly harnessed together, they will scatter in all directions as soon as the advancing spirit of the times will weaken and break the bonds.

This conviction of the grave danger facing the monarchy gained a deep statesman-like elucidation ten years later in a book anonymously published at Hamburg in 1842, which, under the title Austria and Its Future, gave a pitiless analysis of the formidable inner antagonisms of the monarchy. The author of this book was Baron Victor Andrian von Werburg, a chamberlain and a high official in the court administration, and later vice-president of the National Assembly. As one of the most cultivated aristocrats of his time, his opinion may be regarded as representative. Andrian was of the opinion that Austria is a purely imaginary name which does not signify any compact people, any country, any nation….a conventional term of several nationalities sharply distinct each from the other. There are Italians, Germans, Slavs, Magyars, but there is no Austrian national consciousness. The idea of the state is annihilated by the principle of nationality. There arose a Slav, a Hungarian, and an Italian national feeling which consolidated itself more from day to day, rejected all foreign elements, and expanded with a prophetic vehemence. The system of these particularistic consciousnesses menaces the very existence of Austria. Only inertia succeeds in holding the monarchy together. This state of mind is like the buried corpses in Pompeii which, preserved during many centuries, fall into dust and ashes as soon as a beam of God’s free sun or a blast of wind touches them. How could such a state resist the growing consciousness of unity of the Slavs which begins to form a compact phalanx from Troppau to Cattaro?

Thoughtful men of later generations judged the future of the monarchy with the same pessimism. Ferdinand Kürnberger, the greatest Austrian publicist of the second half of the nineteenth century, agreed with these opinions, and he always regarded Austria as an anachronistic country and contrary to the spirit of Europe. He repeatedly emphasized the essentially Asiatic nature of Austria.

And lest these remarks be regarded as the impressionist utterances of exacerbated poets and publicists, I would call attention to the diagnosis of Ottokar Lorenz, the distinguished historian who, though a native Austrian, did not hide his deeply pessimistic opinions. He too talked of the second sick man of Europe, and he never took the so-called new constitutional era of Francis Joseph seriously. On the contrary, he considered the various constitutional experiments to be like the experiments of England to remold the Turkish empire, because he was of the opinion that the old Austria had died as a consequence of the Revolution of 1848.

This pessimistic attitude also gradually took possession of the leaders of practical politics, and Count Taaffe, prime minister of Austria during two decades, called his own policy, with crude honesty, the policy of Fortwursteln (to go on in the old groove). That this policy would earlier or later demoralize the national forces was clearly understood by the enlightened elements of the state. Professor Masaryk, now president of Czecho-Slovakia, disgusted by the petty compromises without principle, called the Austrian parliament a Tandelmarket (a junk market). And Eignest Körber, one of the last premiers of the monarchy saw the situation of the monarchy as darkly as Metternich did after 1848.

This pessimistic public opinion penetrated even the circles of the Viennese court itself. General von Margutti, one of the leaders of the chief military bureau, narrates in his memoirs that beginning with his earliest youth he heard that the monarchy was not an up-to-date state, that it had no right to existence, and that it was only upheld by the personality of the old Emperor after whose death it would fall asunder like an old barrel robbed of its hoops. This conviction exasperated and perhaps drove to death Crown Prince Rudolph himself. I am only anxious to know as a silent observer, he once wrote to a friend, how much time such an old and tough edifice as this Austria takes before it cracks in all its joints and falls asunder. The successor of Rudolph, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir apparent, was even more impressed by the approaching catastrophe, and endeavored in vain to avoid the fate which menaced not only the state but his own life. This feeling of an approaching disaster dominated the more clear-sighted elements of the army also. Conrad von Hötzendorf, later the chief of general staff during the war, emphasized for many years in his memoranda to the Emperor that the Italian and Jugo-Slav irredenta threatened the monarchy with collapse. Similarly, General Auffenberg as minister of war judged the situation in 1912. At the time of the Balkan crisis he uttered the following prophetic words to the German ambassador:

We need at least a half century of peace in the Monarchy to put the southern Slavs in order and this quietness can be maintained only by eliminating all the hopes of the southern Slavs for Russian protection, otherwise the Monarchy goes to pieces.{4}

This insecurity of the future oppressed even the old Emperor in spite of the fact that those around him tried carefully to keep all alarming news from him. A documentary witness of this pessimistic mood is a testamentary provision of the Emperor of 1901 in which Francis Joseph established a family property in trust of sixty-million gold crowns the purpose of which was determined by the following words:

If in the course of events and in the historical evolution, the form of government of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy should suffer a change and, what God may prevent., the crown should not remain in our house, the order of succession for the family property in trust established by me should be determined by those principles of common right which are in existence in the ordinary code of law from June first, 1811.

The chief ally of the Dual Monarchy, the German government itself, was also haunted by the ghost of the approaching dissolution of the Danube empire. The German chancellor, Prince Bülow, in order to avoid possible dangerous conflicts in the case of the disaster of Austria, suggested in 1905 through his ambassador in St. Petersburg, a plan of a Treaty of Disinterestedness according to which both Germany and Russia would declare not to make an annexation in the case of collapse of the Danube monarchy.{5}

These many and various declarations and utterances, which all denounce the extreme uncertainty of the existence of the monarchy, cannot be a pure accident, but are a symptom and almost a symbol of a deeply rooted organic crisis. There can be no doubt that many of the better intellects clearly saw or felt that the monarchy was being pushed toward disaster by irresistible historical forces.

CHAPTER III — THE DOUBLE WAR OF THE HABSBURG MONARCHY

Not only does the foresight of isolated men demonstrate that the dissolution of the monarchy was not a mechanical accident, but the final crisis, the final collapse itself, proved this truth even to the satisfaction of those who are distrustful of the more subtle, causal connections in social things.

There is, before all, the striking fact that the World War and the Sarajevo plot, which was its immediate cause, were in the closest connection with the outer policy of the Habsburg monarchy which again was determined by the social and national structure of the monarchy. At this place I cannot enter now upon the detailed analysis of this connection as this can only be done after the reader understands the statics and dynamics of the empire.

At this juncture I wish only to say that the monarchy’s collapse was due not only to its struggles with foreign enemies, but in a no less degree to another war which the monarchy was constrained to carry on with its own so-called inner enemies, that is to say, with a very important mass of its own peoples. There is no fact, as far as I see, which could prove the inner organic dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy with such an almost symbolical force as this double war of the monarchy amid the frightful embarrassments of the world-crisis.

The history of this inner war of the monarchy has not yet been written as the most influential personalities of the old regime, who knew the warlike events the most intimately, do not like to lift the veil from the inner disintegration of the empire which would put in an unfavorable light the problem of war responsibility. On the other hand those elements who face this problem objectively or even with sympathy have naturally only a fragmentary knowledge concerning the facts since the official archives relating to this period are still closed.{6}

In spite of these difficulties sufficient facts about the inner war of the monarchy became manifest to convince any objective observer of the inner motivation of the crisis. In this connection nobody can deny that the warlike absolutism nowhere took such rigid and uncouth forms as in the Habsburg empire where not only all military operations were strictly withdrawn from the control of the parliamentary corporations, but the economic life, the administration, the judiciary itself was put under a rude military control.{7} The only official organ to supervise the foreign and military policy, the so-called Delegations, were not even convened during the first three years of the war because the leading circles were aware that the critics from the Slavs and the Socialists would destroy the prestige of the monarchy. For the same reason the Austrian Parliament ceased to function during three years and when the young emperor, terrified by the many signs of dissolution, gave general amnesty to the so-called traitors of the country and called the Parliament together, declarations were heard which made the blood chill in the veins of the old Austrian patriots. Victor Bibl, the excellent Austrian historian with a very outspoken German tendency, writes:

The secession movement in Bohemia encouraged by this sign of feebleness lifted its head of Medusa now more and more audaciously and recklessly. The Czech representatives did not hesitate to praise openly in parliament those soldiers who deserted; they did not abstain from the menace that the destiny of Bohemia would be decided on the conference table of the Allied Powers and not in Austria. The culminating point of the national frenzy and of an open high treason was reached by a declaration of the Czechs on the Day of Epiphany in 1918 in which they manifested their conviction that the