bfl
arnold schwarzenegger?
Bookmark.
By the last quarter of the 1800s....the Hapsburg Empire was dying off. It was more of dog-and-pony show or soap opera, than some kingdom with actual power.
Having defeated him it was advantageous to the Romans to subsequently write Hannibal up in every positive light possible, for the greater he, the greater those who defeated him.
By contrast those in who languish under the same legal philosophies as led to the French Revolution (that underscore “administrative law”, not common laws, as basis for all laws and governance) could not but benefit if any system that was a rival to them was cast in worse possible terms.
If only America had successfully resisted, in the 19th and 20th centuries, perversion and usurpation of her legal system at the hands of so-called “progressives” the same sort abuse would be heaped on us too ... only more shrilly (in like manner it is heaped upon the “Robber Barons” who somehow managed to lead industrialization and presided over a general increase in prosperity but somehow didn’t fill the land with mass graves, Terrors, and all that).
In reality the Habsburg empire was doomed by multiculturalism.
Nowhere Austria did good? What, acting as Europe’s bulwark against the Ottomans and Islam in general for hundreds of years didn’t count for anything?
They mishandled the assassination by the Serbs. Serbia would never agree to the terms(and they didn’t) set for them by their masters, for the death of Ferdinand, and it led to their downfall.
“Is it a coincidence Austria and Central Europe have become nothing but a living history museum since the fall of the Habsburgs?”
A feudal monarchy, destroyed millions of lives, stood against human freedom everywhere. The antithesis of everything decent, good, or American. But I know a lot of Americans really pine for a monarchy. Some are catholic who enjoy that, some are vapid types who just want a monarch celebrity culture, and some are anglophiles who wish we had a queen.
But they are all wrong.
Why did it inspire such loyalty until the very end?
Well, it didn't, exactly. It certainly morphed through several succeeding phases, among them a forced marriage between Hungary and Austria that was the length to which Maria Theresa was forced to ascend the throne. There was, prior to that, the fading of the Spanish Habsburgs that culminated in the unfortunate Charles II and the War of the Spanish Succession that lit off the 18th century's little parade of mini-wars. The Austrian side of the house didn't really survive it by much: she bore 16 children but their patrimony lay elsewhere.
And so the family survived in the form of its secondary lines pretty much until the events this review concentrates on happened. By 1848 the handwriting was on the wall. And the one fellow who appeared willing and capable of dealing with a gentle divorce of its constituent peoples took a bullet from Gavrilo Princip on 28 June, 1914.
AS the title mentions the Hapsburg monarchy as opposed to the empire, the real cause of their decline was the loss of mastery of the German states. As German nationalism rose in the 19th century, the two big dogs had to fight it out to see who would lead them - and Prussia won. At that point, Vienna could only look south for expansion, trying to cobble together a superpower from an assortment of unrelated ethnic and religious groups.
When Hitler entered Austria in 1938, he was actually undoing the exclusion of Austria from Bismarck’s Germany; there was no monarchy left to oppose him, and many Austrians realized this was the only means for Austria to have any relevance at all. FWIW, Hitler himself was Austrian and as such had difficulty enlisting in the German army in WWI.
My wife has a rare genetic skeletal disorder and was the subject of a scientific paper. Most noticeably her hips did not fully develop at puberty and the bones in her arms and legs are disproportionately long and narrow for her height. She has very small wrists. There are other traits and minor problems associated, but these are the externally noticeable issues.
She is a descendent of the Romanov family and this condition along with hemophilia was one of the disorders that plagued the Romanovs and the other royal families. In the past 100 years the number of her relatives marrying one another decreased dramatically, so the disorders have all but disappeared. Neither her mother or her father had the same skeletal disorder, but she was told that it was passed down through her mother’s genes. None of our kids or our grandkids inherited the issue.
My wife’s grandmother was in her 40s when she gave birth to my wife’s mother. My wife’s mother was 42 when she gave birth to my wife. My wife is now in her 60s. This effectively brought my wife a couple generations closer than most would be to the issue.
At this point her genetic disorder does not cause her any serious difficulties, but she is a curiosity for doctors who study this type of thing.
bkmk
Was told by relation that my family had a distant princess in the Hapsburg family. Too hard to trace so I gave up.
I recommend “The Army of Francis Joseph” by Gunther Rothenburg. It has a good bit of information regarding the internal politics of the final years of the Dual Monarchy.
You can be a valid and viable state, but if your neighbors and rivals are more viable, you’ll have trouble. What might have worked splendidly in 1700 or 1800 was having problems by 1900.