What did the last emperor of Austria-Hungary look like? Only a few will have in mind a slim young man with dark hair and a mustache. The image of Emperor Franz Joseph with his white whiskers and bushy mustache has become too iconic. But when he died in November 1916, the empire was not yet over, even if contemporary memories testify that not a few felt exactly that even then. The last emperor was called Karl. And in the two years that he remained on the throne, he developed more of his own political activity than his predecessor had done in decades with all the dutiful filing work that Franz Joseph did from morning to night.
The unfortunate Archduke Rudolph, son of Franz Joseph and “Sisi”, took his own life in 1889. The second heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was killed by Serbian nationalists in 1914. The emperor’s grandnephew, born in 1887, unexpectedly moved up. At 29 he became Emperor Charles I of Austria and King Karoly IV of Hungary.
In search of peace
Karl ended the de facto military dictatorship that had existed since the beginning of the war. The Reichsrat was reopened, political prisoners were released, censorship was, well, not abolished, but restored to the pre-war level when it had been exercised with severe sloppiness. A complaints committee was set up for factory workers, which also included workers’ representatives. And the first thing the new Emperor did was to remove Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf from the General Staff, who had already been one of the fiercest warmongers before 1914. Instead, Karl put out feelers of peace. In Berlin, however, he encountered granite. Politically, militarily and economically, Austria was far too dependent on Germany to be able to pursue its own power politics. When a letter from him to his brother-in-law Sixtus von Bourbon-Parma became known, which dealt with a separate peace with the Entente, he had to go to the German Emperor Wilhelm II in Canossa and pledge allegiance to the alliance.
The Sixtus affair is seen as proof of Karl’s political naivety. Likewise the rest of the activism, which was not able to stop the decline, but rather accelerated it. Because Karl allowed a debate in which a wealth of ideas and initiatives for the reform of the multi-ethnic state were born, some of which were then pursued to some extent. But there could be no talk of a clear plan and resolute implementation. Especially since the Hungarians were not willing to let their half of the empire make a third or fourth. The peace policy also failed due to half-heartedness, and there was no word at all of offers of their own territorial concessions. From the historiographical side on the left, it is also disputed that the liberalization should have served the public good, it was only trying to save power. No one can say whether a just peace, a democratization of the Reich and a appeasement of nationalisms would have been possible in any other way. The only thing that is certain is that nobody else really tried, but Karl did.
In the saloon car into exile
The end of his short rule then had slightly operetta-like features. Symbolic of this is the fact that his advisors later included Colonel Anton Lehar, brother of the composer. The empire disintegrated, German Austria (“that which remained”) headed towards the republic. Karl signed that he would accept the form of government that the people wanted to give themselves and that he would renounce any part in the affairs of government. Later he tried to thwart it again. After all, the word “abdication” was not on any of the slips of paper. He then had to go into exile in Switzerland. But – it’s Austria – he was allowed to leave the country in the saloon car. At the last station before the border, he retracted all previous statements. You won’t go wrong if you assume the driving force in his wife Zita, who is said to have had an iron will. From the exile Karl tried twice more in Hungary a restoration. But they didn’t wait for him there either; or only a few, at least enough for a skirmish at Budaörs that cost the lives of 19 soldiers. Those were the 100 days à la Austria-Hungary. Actually not unsympathetic, considering how many men died after Napoleon’s return.
Karl was arrested in the Tihany Abbey on Lake Balaton, where today you can see the window through which he is said to have looked melancholy at the water. Then it was on ships of His British Majesty (King George V was worried that the fate of the Romanovs would catch up with the Habsburgs) down the Danube through the Black Sea and Mediterranean to the Portuguese Atlantic island of Madeira. Karl died there of pneumonia, probably as a result of the Spanish flu, on April 1, 1922. He left behind his wife Zita, who was to live until 1989, and eight children in quite precarious circumstances as far as worldly goods are concerned.
But Karl has an afterlife. Not only the eternal, for which he could hope as a Christian, but also an earthly one: work has been going on for a long time to raise him to the honor of the altars. A Catholic beatification by Rome took place in 2006, and supporters are hopeful of a canonization soon. That may be important for the living: Charlemagne’s tomb in Funchal on Madeira is already a place of worship, and there has long been no talk of a transfer to the Viennese Capuchin crypt. For the person concerned it is irrelevant – as the humble and pious Karl Habsburg-Lothringen would certainly have been the first to say.
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