Customer Reviews

The Fall of the House of Habsburg

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One of Crankshaw's best, this forthrightly conservative and sympathetic book is premised on the idea that, whatever its faults, Austria's solution to the problems of nationalism and the Balkans were not self-evidently worse than what followed in Europe. He's deliberately rebutting A.J.P. Taylor, as he also does in his biography of Bismarck.

But Crankshaw is too good a writer, and too intelligent, to beat a hobbyhorse. He writes magisterially of Franz Josef's reign and the many personalities who came and went. His description of the Franco-Austrian war is particularly good.

Readable and humane -- not to be missed by anyone who enjoys history.

Edward Crankenshaw's sympathetic history of the last decades of the Habsburg Empire is an excellent and informative read and good to keep along side the equally good but slightly too harsh history by AJP Taylor. The one criticism of the book is that the author shows an obvious sympathy with the dynasty rather than simply relating the story. Comments on the Hungarians and reference to their manipulation and abuse of the 1867 Compromise to their own benefit are spoken in a censorious manner. The facts may be true but the Hungarians had a number of good reasons for not being crazy about the Empire or its ruling dynasty. To expect anything other than temporary and conditional loyalty from them is expecting too much from a nation the dynasty would have destroyed if it could.

This is a marvelous little history of one of the great royal dynasties of Eurpoe which came to an end with the First World War.

Proof of the universal appeal of this book and Crankshaw's writing style lies in the fact that this reviewer has read the book at three different times in his life (once as an undergraduate, another time at the conclusion of law school and yet another time about a year ago). Even though each of these three readings occurred at times when the reviewer's outlook and background on the subject matter was quite different, he derived pleasure and something new with each reading.

3 out of 5. I purchased this book so that I could better appreciate a visit to Austria and I was not disappointed. I recommend for the non-historian, that a less scholarly read is perused first, as this book is chock-full of characters and so broad in scope and rich in description, that it is easy to lose track of people, places, and events. I took notes to better keep track of the lineage of the Hapsburg rulers and my subsequent impressions of them.

Even though this book was written over thirty years ago and the period has probably been subject to many revised histories, I found this book interesting because it gives the in-depth reasoning behind the actions of the various players. It includes lots of intrigues and gives a glimpse of flawed personalities. My only complaint is the writer uses personal pronouns when he should name the person and it's confusing to whom he's referring at times. It seems unbiased, but it's difficult to know if it really is without reading dozens of other books for the period. It is not a good book to go to sleep by, but is excellent when you feel the need to make yourself smarter.

Author is not interested in the presenting of head-levelled, balanced, solid facts' grounded history of the last 70 years of the Austrian Empire.
Author is presenting his view on personality and psychology of Frantz Josef, members of his family and some of his ministers, where History serves as a background to provide examples and illustrations. This kind of approach is quite befitting to the genre of Historical Fiction, but out of place in the History Department. Author has unabashed admiration towards Frantz Josef and tries to show to readers, that contrary to the general opinion Emperor was an intellegent and reasonable person and brilliant political tactician. Author's line of resoningis is rather peculiar and goes as such, that History shows us that blunders of elected governments and political leaders are as frequent and as bad as of any autocrate, and Frantz Josef and his ministers were neither worst nor more clueless than contemporary governments of England for example. This reasoning is going in various forms and disguises through the book. For example author informs us that Frantz Josef being young, unexperienced and lacking any solid soldierng and military education had appointed himself his own War Minister and Comander in Chief, concentrating his efforts on smart uniforms, parade-ground maneuvres, and spit and span kind of soldireing with horredous results at Solferino and Magenta. However he immediately adds that British army at Crimea, run by minister resposible before Parliament and constitutional Queen performed equally bad in Crimea, only 5 years before . Author tries present in the best possible light what had become undoing of the Empire and the Dynasty i.e. Frantz Josef's Nationalities' policy. In 1848 he used army, composed of German and Slav recruites,to supress the Revolution making to Slavs all kind of vague promises to invoke thier help against rebellious Hungarian nobility. As the reward Slavs of the Empire instead of autonomy got unitarian Germaizing Empire, where Slavs and Magyars and Rumanians had become equal with each other and Germans and Italians as well, on the precondition of abdicating their own national identities and accepting the German-Austrian one. Than after the loss of Italian possessions and the defeat from Prussia Emperor had reconstituted his Empire as Dual Monarchy in 1867, with Hungary getting almost independence and Slavs left at tender mercy of Magyars suppressing any Croatian, Serbian and Slovak national identity through imposition of the enforced Magyarization. The fate of Rumanians of Transilvania was not better either. In Bohemia and Moravia Czechs were as well offended and severe conflict between Germans ans Czechs which had lead directly to the Munich was brewing. To mollify Czechs ,the status of the second language for local administration and education was given, neither satisfying Czechs who had wanted their own parliament akin to Hungarian Diet, with it's broad powers encompasing everything but Foreign Policy and Army, nor ensuring Germans who had felt themselves threatend in their position of the privileged nation of Austrian Lands. Exactly among Bohemian and Moravian German millieu ideas had sprung, Hitler included in his ideological brew later. German liberals-nationalists in Bohemia and to slightly lesser extend in the Austrian Lands proper started to speak about Anshluss and entering into Grossen Deutshland. In Moravian Brno(Brauenau)German Trade Unionists called their organization, closed for Czechs, the German National Socialist workers' Party, around the time Hitler was a schoolboy still. Managing this mess definitely required some tactical skill, but mess had been created by Frantz Josef himself, according to the author by consequences of quite pardonable blunders.