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American Books on Austria-Hungary1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2009
Extract
American scholarship on Austria-Hungary, at least so far as it concerns published books, got under way only at the end of the First World War. A fair number of books were written during the previous century, but few made any pretension to serious scholarship and fewer still had any permanent value. The prewar literature consisted of a few history texts;2 some polemical works on the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–49, most of which were ardently pro-Kossuth;3 descriptive and travel accounts designed to acquaint Americans with the native homes of the newer wave of immigrants (books which were usually well-intentioned but were also sentimental and superficial);4 and tracts on Austria-Hungary and the World War, which were at best one-sided and at worst sheer propaganda.5
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- Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1966
References
2 Cabot, John S. C., Austria, Its Rise and Present Power (New York: Dodd Mead, 1877)Google Scholar; and Sidney, Whitman, Austria (New York: Putnam, 1911).Google Scholar
3 Peabody, Elizabeth P. (ed.), Crimes of the House of Austria against Mankind (New York: Putnam, 1852)Google Scholar; Janos, Pragay, The Hungarian Revolution (New York: Putnam, 1850)Google Scholar; Headley, P. C., The Life of Louis Kossuth (Auburn, N. Y.: Derby and Miller, 1852)Google Scholar; Tefft, Benjamin F., Hungary and Kossuth (3rd ed., Philadelphia: J. Ball, 1852)Google Scholar; and Julian, Kune, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian Hungarian Exile (Chicago: J. Kune, 1911).Google Scholar
4 Frederick, Shoberl, Austria (Philadelphia: Williams, 1828) (very thin)Google Scholar; Palmer, Francis H. E., Austro-Hungarian Life in Town and Country (New York: Putnam, 1904) (quite superficial)Google Scholar; and Clark, Francis E., Old Homes of New Americans (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913) (a laudable attempt to dispel American ignorance and overcome prejudices against non-German immigrants from Austria-Hungary, but often sentimental and naive)Google Scholar.
5 Josef, Goricar and Stowe, Lyman Beecher, The Inside Story of Austro-German Intrigue (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1920) (worthless Pan-Slav propaganda which, among other things, traces an Austro-German plot to dismember Russia back to the Crimean War)Google Scholar; Gustav, Pollak, The House of Hohenzollern and the Habsburg Monarchy (New York: New York Evening Post Co., 1917) (equally superficial, though not as biased)Google Scholar; Ernest, Ludwig, Austria-Hungary and the War (New York: Ogilvie, 1915) (an Austrian apologia)Google Scholar; Luigi, Carnoyale, Why Italy entered the Great War (Chicago: Italian-American Publishing Co., 1917) (an Italian anti-Austrian diatribe)Google Scholar; and Thomas, Čapek (ed.), Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule (New York: Revell, 1915) (the best of the lot).Google Scholar
6 It is commonly recognized, for example, that the American delegation at the Paris Peace Conference was better supplied with geographical, economic, and ethnographical data than any other Allied delegation. On the work of the American experts, see especially Gelfand, Lawrence E., The Inquiry (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963).Google Scholar
7 Preveden's, Francis R. A History of the Croatian People (2 vols., New York: Philosophical Library, 1955–1962) is a scholarly and handsomely illustrated work. However, it reaches only to 1683 and contains little on the Habsburg period.Google Scholar
8 Macartney's, Carlile A. Hungary: a Short History (Chicago: Aldis, 1962) is easily the best survey in English, but despite the place of publication I cannot bring myself to claim it as an American book.Google Scholar
9 Spitz's, Lewis W. Conrad Celtis, the German Arch-Humanist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), a brilliant biography and analysis of Celtis's literary activity, thought, and influence, falls into the same period. Celtis's connections with Vienna and the court of Maximilian I seemed to be an insufficient reason, however, to consider it as a book on Austria-Hungary.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 Two biographies of Maria Theresa by Americans, neither of them a distinguished work, may be mentioned for the sake of completeness. Mahan's, J. A. Maria Theresa of Austria (New York: Crowell, 1932) represents no real research and is written in the arch and cloying style of an old-fashioned courtierGoogle Scholar. Constance Lily, Morris's Maria Theresa, the Last Conservative (New York: Knopf, 1937) is an attempt at serious biography, based on wide reading and even some work in the Vienna archives. The author is, however, not an historian, uses her material without discrimination, and commits a number of howling errors.Google Scholar
11 Haas's, Arthur G. very useful study of Metternich's internal policy, Metternich, Reorganization and Nationality, 1813–1818 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1963) is not discussed here because it was published abroad.Google Scholar
12 Goldmark's, Josephine C. Pilgrims of '48 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1930) is a useful memoir on the role played in the Austrian revolution by her father, Joseph Goldmark. Half the book is, however, devoted to his later life in the United States.Google Scholar
13 In addition to the major American works on the origins of the war by Fay, Sidney B. and Bernadotte, Schmitt, there are two very solid and important monographs by American authors on this period: Bernadotte Schmitt's The Annexation of Bosnia, 1908–1909 (Cambridge, England: University Press, 1937)Google Scholar and Helmreich, E. C., The Diplomacy of the Balkan Wars, 1912–1913 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938)Google Scholar. Neither, however, fits into the scope of this essay, the former because it was published abroad, the latter because, though Austrian policy receives a full and fair treatment, the main emphasis is on the policy of the Balkan states and of other Great Powers. Excluded on the same grounds is Vucinich, Wayne S., Serbia between East and West: the Events of 1908–1908 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1954).Google Scholar
14 Two works can be mentioned here only to warn against them. Károly, Lónyay, Rudolph, the Tragedy of Mayerling (New York: Scribner, 1949), is a bitter anti-Habsburg and anti-Austrian polemic full of the most unreliable and spiteful gossip, redeemed from complete worthlessness only by the modicum of information it gives on Rudolph himselfGoogle Scholar. von Moennich's, Marie Larisch Her Majesty Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1934) is pure court hagiography.Google Scholar
15 A number of very able studies in recent years shed much light on the diplomacy of the war and the Paris Peace Conference in regard to Austria-Hungary: Mamatey, Victor S., The United States and East Central Europe, 1914–1918 (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Lederer, Ivo J., Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Perman, D., The Shaping of the Czechoslovak State (Leiden: Brill, 1962)Google Scholar; Spector, Sherman D., Rumania at the Paris Peace Conference (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962)Google Scholar; and Wandycz, Piotr S., France and her Eastern Allies, 1919–1925 (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1962). None, however, deal primarily with Austria-Hungary.Google Scholar
16 So many, in fact, that I have abandoned my attempt at completeness and am discussing only the more important studies.