* This paper was read and discussed on December 28, 1950 in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association.

1 Lettres de Prince de Metternich à la Comtesse de Lieven, 1818–1819, ed. Hanoteau, Jean (Paris, 1909).Google Scholar

2 Though strongly condemning Metternich's aristocratic social order as reactionary, Valentin points out his cosmopolitanism represents in some ways “the best inheritance from the Enlightenment.” Best foreign-published post-war study, with new archives uncited by Srbik, is Cora's, Metternich und die Prauen (Zurich, 1948).Google Scholar

3 Metternich to Wellington, 1824. von Srbik, Heinrich Ritter, Metternich, 2 vols. (Munich, 1925): I, 320Google Scholar. This paper throughout draws heavily on Srbik for his unexcelled information and documents but not necessarily for his interpretations and certainly not for his politics. ProfRath, R. John, a leading American authority on Austria, calls Srbik “the most outstanding Austrian historian of the past generation” in American Historical Review, July 1950, p. 898.Google Scholar

4 Srbik, , I, 492–6; II, 226–31; and passim on guilt and folly of Sedlnitzky' police system, for which Metternich was blamed.Google Scholar

5 Srbik, , I, 492–4.Google Scholar

6 However, portions of this Srbik material were used in English for the following English and American biographies: Auernheimer, Raoul, Prince Metternich, Statesman and Lover (New York, 1940)Google Scholar; Cecil, Algernon, Metternich (London, 1933)Google Scholar; Coudray, H. du, Metternich (New Haven, 1936)Google Scholar; Herman, Arthur, Metternich (New York, 1932)Google Scholar; de Reichenberg, F., Prince Metternich in Love and War (London, 1938). Of these, only du Coudray offers new insights and then mainly on his personality and his diplomatic finesse rather than on the historical function of conservatism.Google Scholar

7 In his “secret memorandum” for Alexander, Tsar of Dec. 1820, Memoirs, III, 470.Google Scholar

8 Letter from Vienna, , Oct. 6, 1820. Memoirs, III, 394–5.Google Scholar

9 de Reichenberg, Frederich, Prince Metternich in Love and War (London, 1938), p. 434.Google Scholar

10 To which he added: “this caricature of the English constitution because it has none of the fundamental conditions whereby it could attain to its model.” Letter to Wrede, 1831, quoted in Woodward, E. L., Three Studies in European Conservatism (London, 1929); p. 53Google Scholar. For more on this subject, see Bibl, , Metternich in neuer Beleuchtung; sein geheimer Briefwechsel mit Wrede, 1831–4 (Vienna, 1928).Google Scholar

11 Letter from Vienna, , 06 15, 1847. Memoirs, VII, 402.Google Scholar

12 Srbik, , II, 298.Google Scholar

13 Bibl, , Metternich, 380.Google Scholar

14 For these and other Metternich influences on Disraeli, see Moneypenny, and Buckle, , The Life of Benjamin Disraeli (new and rev. ed., New York, 1929); I, 997–1003, 1007, 1010. On Oct. 12, 1848 Disraeli wrote his exiled Austrian preceptor: “You are the only philosophical statesman I ever encountered. … I catch wisdom from your lips and inspiration from your example.”Google Scholar

15 Letter to Stanhope, Lord, Feb. 12, 1864Google Scholar. Moneypenny and Buckle, I, 1010. Italics mine.

16 Memoirs, IV, 432.Google Scholar

17 Memoirs, III, 480–1.Google Scholar

18 For the texts of Jordan's popular speeches sacrificing liberalism to nationalism, with a curiously proto-Nazi sense of German racial mission against “inferior” Slavs, etc., see “Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen der deutschen konstituierenden Nationalversammlung, durch die Redaktionskommission und in deren Auftrag von Professor Franz Wigard,” 9 vols. (Frankfurt a.M., published by Johann David Sauerlander, 1848–1849); I, 328, 426; II, 1143, 1146, 1150; VI, 4574, 4575; etc.Google Scholar

19 For Wagner's supposed liberalism and actual proto-nazism and for its direct influence on Hitler, cf. the two Wagner chapters in Viereck, Peter, Metapolitics; From the Romantics to Hitler (New York, Knopf, 1941).Google Scholar

20 Greenberg, Martin, “Heinrich Heine: Flight and Return,“ Commentary Magazine (New York, 1949), p. 229, col. 2.Google Scholar

21 Heine, Heinrich, Works, tr. by Leland, C. G., V, 207–8.Google Scholar

22 Heine, Heinrich, Werke, ed. by Watzel, O. (Leipzig, Insel-Verlag), IV, 479.Google Scholar

23 Pp. 375–6 on the 1819 crisis. Italics mine.

24 Cf. the Jahn chapter in Viereck, Peter, Metapolitics: From the Romantics to Hitler (New York, Knopf, 1941Google Scholar) for documentation on Jahn's proto-nazism, based on citations from primary sources not used in English before. A book-length study of Jahn in English is overdue in view of his extraordinary influence in changing German nationalism from liberal to totalitarian. Mention may be made here of the article by Kohn, Hans, “Father Jahn's Nationalism,” Review of Politics (10, 1949), XI, 419–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Wentzke, Paul, Geschichte der deutschen Burschenschaft (Heidelberg, 1919), pp. 118 ff., 131, 167–8, 181–3, 299–301Google Scholar. von Treitschke, Heinrich, History of Germany, 6 vols. (New York, 1915–1919), II, 432.Google Scholar

26 The foremost authority in America on these three Austrians of the Metternich school is Prof. Friedrich Engel-Janosi of the Catholic University in Washington, D. C. Supplementing Srbik's Metternich biography are Engel-Janosi's valuable biographies of these three men. Only two are available in American libraries (at Harvard, etc.): Graf Rechberg (Munich and Berlin, 1927); Der Vreiherr von Hiibner (Innsbruck, 1933).

27 Memoirs, III, 102–7Google Scholar. Srbik, I, 476 ff.Google Scholar

28 Memoirs, III, 74–87Google Scholar. de Hübner, Le comte (Hübner, A. J.), Une année de ma vie (1848–1849), Paris, 1891; pp. 15–18Google Scholar. Srbik, , I, 462–5.Google Scholar

29 Memoirs, III, 74–87, 102–7Google Scholar. Hübner, , 15–17Google Scholar. Srbik, , I, 456–465.Google Scholar

30 Srbik, , I, 456–60 discusses Mettemich's enlightened but frustrated reform-plans of 1811. For further background on relations with anti-reform emperor, cf. I, 435–65.Google Scholar

31 Srbik, , II, 245–86Google Scholar. Coudray, Du, Metternich, p. 357Google Scholar, summarizes in the following brief paragraph the Srbik material on Mettemich's efforts to the very last minute to forestall the revolution of 1848 by reforms from above and by summoning a central Austrian assembly:

“Metternich at last succeeded in forcing his views on the council. An imperial letter, which announced to the Estates of Lower Austria the summoning of delegates from all the provincial diets of the Empire, was drafted and dispatched to the president of the Land-haus, Montecuccoli. The point is of great importance, for it helps explain Mettemich's serenity. He counted on this decree, extorted at the eleventh hour from the reluctant archdukes, to avert a catastrophe the next morning when the delegates met. For thanks to it their demands for reform had been forestalled; they could talk in peace. He thought he had safeguarded the monarchy.”

However, Montecuccoli—historians offer various explanations for his conduct—never made use of this important document! On March 13, Metternich resigned, overthrown not by any widespread mass revolution but (according to Srbik) by the palace intrigue of Kolowrat, Archduke John, Archduke Francis Charles and his ambitious wife Sophia. They hoped to further their several private interests by sacrificing Metternich as scapegoat to the revolution. Meanwhile the Police Chief Sedlnitzky, so zealous against imaginary revolutionary plots, did little to safeguard Metternich when at last a real one occurred but stood by in mysterious negligence.

32 Cecil, , Metternich, pp. 173–4:Google Scholar “… The Ministers of the German States assembled at Carlsbad … were agreed that the censorship should extend to pamphlets and books of less than twenty pages in length. … Offensive to minds accustomed to reach political conclusions on die strength of paragraphs and headlines, the notion that revolutionary changes cannot wisely be entertained without at least some twenty-pages worth of study will scarcely provoke industrious intellects.…”

Here the “boner” is that the German printers' expression “zwanzig Druckbogen” in 1819 meant not “twenty pages” but “320 pages,” 16 pages being then calculated as one “Druckbogen.” This gaffe recurs even in very scholarly books.

33 Hübner, , pp. 15–21 (03 1, 1948) and passim.Google Scholar