Fragmente eines politischen Tagebuches: Die Südslawische Frage und Oesterreich-Ungarn vordem Weltkrieg by Joseph M. Baernreither; Joseph RedlichReview by: R. W. Seton-WatsonThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 7, No. 20 (Jan., 1929), pp. 439-443Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4202304 .

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REVIEWS. Fragmente eines politischen Tagebuches: Die Siidslawische Frage und

Oesterreich- Ungarn vor dem Weltkrieg. By Joseph M. Baern- reither. Edited by Joseph Redlich. Berlin (Verlag fur Kultur- politik), 1928.

DR. BAERNREITHER was one of those men of rare understanding, high culture and sterling honesty in whom Austria was by no means lacking on the eve of the Great War, but who unhappily, despite great political activity, were never able to assert their influence over policy. Born at Prague in I845 as the son of a wealthy German Bohemian manu- facturer and landowner, he was equally in touch with the bourgeoisie and with the so-called high feudal nobility, and thus when he first entered Parliament in I883, it was as a representative of the party of " Grossgrundbesitz," so powerful in Austria during the last two decades of the century. But though he was thus identified throughout a long political career with a High Tory party which owed its very existence to an artificial franchise, and which vanished automatically from the scene with the introduction of Universal Suffrage in I907, his views were equally enlightened in home and in foreign affairs. His close study of the British trade union movement, and of such questions as social insurance and child welfare, gave him a position which few deputies of any race or party could rival: he was a recog- nised authority on trade and tariff questions and was for a time Minister of Commerce; and above all, he was for over thirty years tireless in his efforts to promote a working compromise between Germans and Czechs, which he rightly regarded as the key to Austrian internal policy, but which was time after time hindered by fanaticism on both sides and by the hesitations and narrowness of Francis Joseph and his advisers. Baernreither failed, but his name will live in history as one who strove manfully to steer the ship of state away from the abyss into which it finally plunged.

His record in foreign policy is no less remarkable, and it is only fitting that those of his papers which deal with the Southern Slav question should have been edited by Professor Joseph Redlich, who may be said to have occupied on the Radical benches the same unique position as Baernreither among the Conservatives, who shared his rare knowledge and prophetic vision, but who was jealously excluded from all direct influence upon affairs until the ship was actually sinking and was past all human aid. From I892 onwards Baernreither was keenly interested in Bosnian affairs, and soon came to recognise that

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440 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW.

they could only be successfully treated as an integral part of the wider Southern Slav problem. He frequently visited Bosnia and Dalmatia and, in contrast to official circles in Austria-Hungary, took the trouble to establish personal relations with most of the Jugoslav leaders. Not content with this, he made the acquaintance of the Serbian Foreign Minister Milovanovic in I909, and visited Belgrade in i9ii, in order to exchange views with other Serbian statesmen. To the very end he was a close student of Southern Slav affairs, and con- vinced that with a little goodwill and statesmanship Vienna might have won the confidence of Belgrade and solved the problem on lines equally honourable to both sides.

The present volume falls into two unequal sections. The first contains fragments of the memoirs on which he was working at the time of his death in I925, entitled " Siidslawische Politik," and relating mainly to the Bosnian Annexation Crisis of I908: the second is composed of extracts from his diaries and correspondence in the critical years I9I2-I4. It is no exaggeration to say that no more authoritative or enlightening source can be found from which to judge the Balkan policy of Austria-Hungary during the critical period preceding the Great War: for what he writes rests on inside infor- mation in the highest circles, supplemented by his own intimate knowledge of unofficial currents of opinion. He was in close and constant contact with the leaders of the Bohemian nobility-Francis Thun, Charles Schwarzenberg, Silva Tarouca, Clam-Martinitz, and notably Czemin-and through them had access to Francis Ferdinand, at whose request he prepared a memorandum on Bosnian affairs in I909 (reproduced on pp. II5-20), and who, if fate had allowed him to ascend the throne, would undoubtedly have given to Czernin and Baernreither a leading position in his counsels.

Baernreither subjects both Aehrenthal and Berchtold to searching criticism. Starting as a strong advocate of Austro-Russian friend- ship and favouring the division of the Balkan Peninsula into Austrian and Russian spheres of influence, Aehrenthal very soon, by his Sandjak Railway project, and then his annexation policy, alienated Russia, antagonised the Entente, alarmed Italy, and even Germany, and fatally embroiled relations with Serbia. " Our policy of reducing Serbia to economic and political dependence and treating her as a quantite negligeable," Aehrenthal told the Council of Ministers on 27 October, 1907, " has suffered shipwreck. From a conflict between the Monarchy and Serbia only third parties would profit," and it was therefore urgently necessary that " the affairs of Croatia, Dalmatia and Bosnia should be so conducted that the centre of gravity for the Serbo-Croat people should lie inside the Monarchy " (p. 74). Yet within a year he stood committed to an anti-Serbian programme and based this upon provoking a quarrel between Serbia and Bulgaria: and this involved the abandonment of all idea of winning the sympathies of the Serbs and Croats inside the Monarchy. Baernreither, on the other

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REVIEWS. 44I

hand, in his Delegation speech in October, I908, used these prophetic words: " We lost Lombardy because the centre of gravity of the whole Italian idea had fallen outside Austria. We should also lose Bosnia and Hercegovina and compromise the whole Southern Slav question if we did not succeed in placing the centre of gravity of the Southern Slav world inside Austria" (p. 89). On 23 February, I909, his diary contains the entry: " The military 'flooding' of Serbia is of no use to us, but may lead to anything, even to a war on three fronts" (p. I07).

Of special interest is Baernreither's treatment of the famous Fried- jung Trial, in which he himself played the part of intermediary at the final stagc-at the request, not of Aehrenthal (as I had erroneously stated in my book The Southern Slav Question in I9II), but of the presiding judge. The fact that he expressly convicts me of error on this point of detail, but does not challenge any other statement of mine in connection with the trial, encourages me to hope that we were agreed in all essentials: and in this I was confirmed by our last long conversation in June, I925. This is a point to which I attach a keen personal value, since it was of Baernreither that I was thinking when in I9II I dedicated my book " to that Austrian statesman who shall possess the genius and the courage necessary to solve the Southern Slav Question."

Baernreither does not hesitate to declare that "Aehrenthal shamefully misused Friedjung," but while declaring it to be " incom- prehensible that Aehrenthal did not make sure as to the authenticity of the documents" before allowing their use in the public press, he refrains from drawing the almost inevitable conclusion that Aehrenthal either knew them to be false, or was so unscrupulous as not to care whether they were or not, so long as they could help on his designs. Baernreither saw that the trial " had turned the whole situation topsy-turvy," and that Aehrenthal should never have employed such methods " if he ever wanted to get back to a tolerable footing with Serbia" (p. I43). But in his later conversations with Aehrenthal he found the latter quite unrepentant, and indisposed to make the slightest economic concession to Serbia, or to encourage the Austrophil currents in Belgrade. " Bulgaria is more important to me than Serbia," was his answer to Baernreither's arguments.

It is unnecessary to add that Baernreither, who had constant dealings with Hungarian statesmen in customs and commercial matters, and especially during the Delegations, soon realised that the intran- sigeance of Budapest was one of the prime obstacles to a settlement of the Southern Slav question. His diary contains frequent notes of conversations with men like Szell, L'ang, Szterenyi, Veszi, Wekerle, who refused to take Serbia seriously or to regard her as a possible friend, or again to make any serious concession to Croatia. But he was hardly less reserved towards the Trialist schemes then favoured in ,certain quarters. On i December, I9I2, he notes a conversation with

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442 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW.

Czernin and others of the " feudal " group. " But no one troubles his head as to how a thoroughly democratic people, which has neither nobility nor large estates, and whose state is of revolutionary orgin, has moved freely for decades and is now in the midst of a victorious struggle for expansion, is to be fitted on to-the old Austria. The word Trialism does not solve it. What might have been the result of a clever, logical policy of many years, could not be achieved over- night even by a Super-Bismarck" (p. I79).

Among many other instructive incidents is the account of Professor Masaryk's visit to Belgrade in December, I9I2, his return to Vienna with definite overtures from the then Serbian Premier Pasic, Berch- told's contemptuous rejection and the unsuccessful protest of Czernin, Schwegel and Baernreither. No less instructive is his conversation in January, I9I3, with the War Minister Krobatin, who treated the annexation of Serbia and the overthrow of the Dual system as sooner or later inevitable. At the same time, he learnt that Berlin " despite loyalty to the alliance does not want to start a world-war on account of'a Serbian plan of Austria " (p. I97). On 6 April, I9I3, he records a conversation with Prochaska, the late Austro-Hungarian Consul at Prizren, who told him the full facts as to his treatment by the Serbs. " There were several infringements of international law, but he was not for a moment threatened in body or life, and the rumours that he was dead, wounded or castrated, were put about by our irresponsible press and turned into an agitation against Serbia " (p. 229). This fully confirms the view which I had long ago put forward on evidence supplied by the late Count Liitzow, and fits in with Baron Szilassy's account from inside the Ballplatz: it should at last explode the cir- cumstantial but quite imaginary story put about by Miss Durham in her book The Serajevo Crime and elsewhere.

These are but a few special incidents amid a wealth of interesting detail. In the summer of I9I3 Baernreither had to negotiate on commercial matters with Wekerle and other Hungarian statesmen, and was driven to the conclusion that, " despite present-day Balkan conditions and all signs of threatening danger, they have still not come to a wiser view." During all this time he was in close touch with Berlin and Munich, with Kiderlen, Jagow, Zimmermann, Fuirsten- berg; he had an important discussion with King Ferdinand of Bulgaria and received a stream of visitors from every Balkan country; and in April, I9I4, he visited Bucarest and discussed political problems with many prominent Roumanians. It may be regretted that he did not live to write proper memoirs, but these scattered notes will always. retain a high first-hand value for those who would recapture the atmo- sphere of pre-war Austria. Dr. Baernreither was an " Austrian) in the widest and best sense of that much abused and extremely elastic word; his reputation is likely to be enhanced still further when the time comes to publish his Bohemian papers: and it is to be hoped that Professor Redlich will soon realise his project of printing

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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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