Das Leben des Kronprinzen Rudolf: mit Briefen und Schriften aus dessen Nachlass by OskarFreiherr von MitisReview by: R. W. Seton-WatsonThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 7, No. 20 (Jan., 1929), pp. 443-445Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4202305 .

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REVIEWS. 443

the Roman and Italian journals of one who added to his political gifts the outlook of a true humanist and lover of art.

R. W. SETON-WATSON.

Das Leben des Kronprinzen Rudolf: mit Briefen und Schriften aus dessen Nachlass. By Oskar Freiherr von Mitis. Leipzig (Insel- Verlag), I928. Illustrations. Pp. 467. I2 Mk.

IT is almost forty years since Crown Prince Rudolf's tragic death, and rarely has a state secret more successfully defied the shameless intrusions of the Yellow Press. This scholarly volume, admirably written by Baron Mitis, the former Director of the Austrian State Archives, and supplemented by a wealth of hitherto unpublished documents, is the first serious estimate of Rudolf's career and char- acter, and may be treated as automatically superseding the mass of sensational trash which has so long regaled the subscribers to lending libraries and of which the anonymous Martyrdom of an Empress is one of the best (or worst) examples.

Baron Mitis has no difficulty in showing that Rudolf was far above the average in talents, and possessed, in addition to the lively temperament of his Bavarian kinsfolk, a genuine passion for work, military efficiency and considerable literary and artistic gifts. Unhappily he was also changeable and erratic, and lacked the character and steady nerves without which he was bound to chafe against increasingly distasteful surroundings. He fell into introspective and morbid ways, came to be regarded as a " Hamlet nature," and even- tually took to drugs, champagne and dissipation. According to more than one witness, including his unconventional cousin Archduke John (Johann Orth), he had been playing with ideas of suicide for some time before the end. We now have in extenso the sworn statements of his friend Count Joseph Hoyos, who was the first to force his way into the dead prince's bedroom at the shooting-lodge of Mayerling: and we thus know how he and Baroness Vetsera died. But the real motives which prompted his suicide still remain obscure: it is quite plainly hinted (but without any details) that the unfortunate Mary Vetsera was the victim of her own romantic infatuation, butin reality played quite a subordinate part in his life and that he had never had any idea of making her his wife. It even appears that he had worked out an entirely abstract plan of dying together with some woman, before ever his choice had fallen upon any particular person. This in itself suggests that some strain of madness or decadence was in his veins. Baron Mitis also quotes the theory (though without committing himself either for or against) that matters of high policy, and especially his relations with the Court of Berlin, had a direct bearing upon his suicide.

The real interest of this book is of course political. It provides a mass of material for one of the most fascinating " might-have-beens "

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444 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW.

of history, namely, the question how far the fate of Europe would have been affected if between the years i888 and I9I4 Rudolf I. and Frederick III. had ruled in the place of Francis Joseph and William II. There can be no doubt that the Liberal currents in Central Europe would have been greatly strengthened. The central tragedy of Rudolf's life is that he was completely out of sympathy with his father and his whole family. In the Middle Ages, he would have led a revolt, like many an heir to the Imperial throne, but in the igth century this vent-hole was not open to him, and he was incapable of quietly biding his time and meantime amusing himself within reason, like some of his contemporaries. He had been educated with extreme care, and then found himself on the threshold of life, burning to be up and -doing, but jealously excluded from all influence upon public affairs, and reduced to the position of a " quantite negligeable": and all that he did only strengthened the Emperor's resolve to keep everything in his own hands. Rudolf soon developed a contempt for the narrow outlook of the high Austrian aristocracy and hardly troubled to conceal it, though it was not known till afterwards that he and Karl Menger had in I878 combined to publish an anonymous pamphlet on " The Austrian Nobility and its constitutional Function." "Nothing is more certain in modern political life "-so runs one of its most enlightening phrases-" than that public powers can only be per- manently upheld if their holders exercise not only their rights but also their duties." His criticism was directed not merely against the aristocracy, but against the whole system then identified with Count Taaffe and the so-called " Iron Ring." He detested Taaffe's feudal and clerical leanings and allied himself more and more with Liberal circles, especially with certain publicists in the neighbourhood of Neues Wiener Tagblatt. The Crown Prince's correspondence with Moriz Szeps and some of the articles which he contributed to the Viennese press, have already been published in I922 in Kronprinz Rudolf: Politische Briefe 1 we are now given articles which Rudolf wrote on the Hungaro-Croatian crisis of I883, on the meeting of his father with the Tsar at Kremsier in I885, and on the Emperor William I. at his death in i888 (ending with the phrase, " Neither his son nor his grandson resembles him: with him a type dies out"). But most interesting of all are his confidential memoranda on questions of foreign policy-notably those reporting his conversations with Bismarck in February, I883 (pp. 27I-74), and March, I887 (pp. 359-64), his report on his visit to the four Balkan States in the spring of I884 (pp. 286-30I), and above all, the lengthy " Memorandum on Home and Foreign Policy" prepared by him in January, i886 (pp. 3i6-52). In this last he is full of praise for the era of Andrassy and denunciation for " the Camarilla " which continues to rule Austria: " these indefinable influences," which still subsist, are to Austria, " like original sin, or

I See my review in No. 3 of Slavonic Review (Vol. I, p. 673).

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REVIEWS. 44S

what Jesuitism is to Catholicism, an inseparable curse." He regrets the failure to fall upon Russia in I877 while she was involved with Turkey, and regards the acquisition of Bosnia as merely " a first stage towards further advances." The German alliance he looks, at mainly from the angle of what he believes to be the inevitable coming- struggle with Russia: but for Hohenzollern Germany he has scant sympathy. " It is founded on bayonets, and on them alone: an unfortunate campaign is bound to be its end " (p. 330). In the event of Russia's defeat his fancy conjures up a new South-east Europe, in which all the Roumanians are united under Austrian suzerainty, and an enlarged Serbia obtains Bosnia but also enters into " a relation of' complete independence with Austria" (a contradiction in terms), while Albania and Bulgaria are linked up with Vienna by military conventions. He even goes so far as to maintain that " a great war, which forces us to fight the Eastern question to a finish, would be a great advantage for our internal conditions and for our whole right of- existence, since it would roll back the tide of Panslavism and leave Austria supreme in the Balkans." His survey of the nationalities of the Dual Monarchy is chiefly notable for its expression of regret at " the suicidal chauvinism and boundless megalomania " which lead the Magyars " to dream of a Hungarian mission in Europe and of ruling over all the other races." Rudolf had a thorough knowledge of Magyar and many connections with Magyar circles: he was predisposed to favour the Liberalism of Budapest as against the reactionary clerical- ism of Taaffe, and it was the relative favour shown by the latter towards the Czechs that helped to cool Rudolf's original Slavophil tendencies. But he was far-sighted enough to see that Hungary's policy towards Croatia, and again towards the Roumanians of Tran- sylvania, was a danger to the Monarchy as a whole and was doomed to failure, owing to the slow growth of Serbian and Roumanian national states beyond the frontier. His attitude towards foreign policy was full of paradox: he had certain Slav sympathies at home, especially towards the Croats, yet he was an ardent admirer of Hungary, in spite of his condemnation of her racial fanaticism: he was keenly anti-Prussian, yet a firm supporter of the German alliance: and yet again, he was Francophil because of French Liberal institutions: and at home, despite strong Liberal and anti-clerical leanings, he could not but see the dangers of the Dual System and its weakening effects upon foreign policy.

Now that the main facts about Mayerling are before us, the private life of the unhappy Rudolf may well be consigned to oblivion. But the political aspects of his life provide many a clue to the history of Francis Joseph's reign, and the present volume, supplemented as it is by a detailed critical bibliography, is not likely to be superseded.

R. WV. SETON-WATSON.

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