The Man Who Died at Serajevo

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1022, 12 July 1930, Page 18

The Man Who Died at Serajevo

N 'June 2S, 1914, Crown £TyMf/c/jj Prince Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, victim to the bullet rSrwKii of - a young Serbian ,>*2qs®cS2sJ student. His death was the pretext, even if not the cause of, 1 he 'World War. That his death should be violent was written in the stars. His life was violent, too —a succes-; sion of explosions which shattered his ! nerves and his position in the world. 1 He hated and loved violently. He; hated Emperor , Franz Joseph, whom i he was to succeeed, and the sovereign j hated him. He hated the Italians,! English, Magyars, Poles. Serbians, and was.hated by them. He was egocentric, bigoted, and autocratic, an Oriental potentate on a rampage in a semiconstitutional monarchy. Franz Ferdinand’s capacity for affection was just as violent. He stormed through all obstacles, and swept away all dynastic objections, when this greatest hater In' the House of Austria finally found a woman on whom he could lavish the pent-up love energy of a futile life. . A modern Prometheus, he hurled defiance at the gods of his day, but found only tender words for the woman who was to share his tragic fate. History has treated him with something akin to scorn and contempt. He was the map with the iron mask, ■who never showed his real features. He was called a sphinx because people did not take the trouble to understand him. His immense capacity to repel frightened away even those who like to investigate the motives of violent emotions. His rudeness discouraged attempts to understand him. The world has forgotten that he had been brought up under abnormal conditions, and that at a very critical period of his life, when he overrode the objection of court and married a girl much inferior to him in social position, he displayed admirable qualities. It is strange that three books on his life should have been published almost at the same time (writes Emil Dentgel, reviewing the volume for the New York "Times”). They are a new approach to the understanding of this great problem of the Hapsburg dynasty. The three authors must have felt that the time has come to rescue Franz Ferdinand’s memory from Ignominy. Perhaps the new estimate of the life and achievements of the former Crown Prince »is linked up with the pew valuation of the life and achievements of Emperor Franz k Joseph. Professor Redlieh has shown ■ up the hollowness of the imperial ■taboo and adduced the matured opinion ■pf a critical age to show the part of

New Books Throw Interesting Light on Heir to Hapsburg Throne Whose Death Precipitated War.

the sovereign in the downfall of Austria. Franz Joseph was wrong, and the conclusign is logical that his great opponent, Franz Ferdinand, was right. The authors in these volumes have mostly elaborated their personal reminiscences and the documents in their own possession. For about thirty-five years longer the real truth about the dead Crown Prince cannot be known. Eternally jealous of the popularity of members of his House,, Franz Joseph gave orders that for fifty” years the correspondence of Franz Ferdinand must be kept under lock and key, sealed with his own hands and preserved in the archives. Given -the temperament of Frai z Ferdinand and the conditions under which he lived at court, he had to become a highly strung instrument of violent extremes. His ambition was overpowering, elementary. In the seat of the mighty sat Emperor Franz Joseph, a new Sun King, awed by his own power. Franz Ferdinand had the torrential energy of the man of action, whereas Franz Joseph was backed by the mystic power of his | crowd. They were two knights in i mediaeval armour, unaware of the ! breaking of a new dawn. The struggle ! was uneven, and for Franz; FerdinI and the only way out was to fall like the defeated, hero of a Shakespearian

■ tragedy. It was a strange destiny I that his death was the prelude to the formidable catastrophe that broke on | mankind. Both the Emperor and his Crown Prince were autocrats, but the latter was in the opposition and that made all the difference in the world. Franz Joseph saw himself in an apotheosis, the centre of the universe. Franz Ferdinand battered the walls of the Hofburg to save the life of the dynasty. The idea of nation was incomprehensible to both of them. The Emperor resented it as a personal insult, and the Crown Prince saw in it merely a new form of lese majeste. “Apres moi le deluge,” was the Emperor’s unavowed policy. The deluge did come, and Herr Chlumeczky, the author of an admirable volume on the Crown Prince, summed up the situation with great insight when, upon learning of his death, her explained: “This means the end of the dynasty.”

The Archduke’s hatred against the world originated, Chlumeczky reveals, during the time when he was suffering from tuberculosis of the lungs and had been given up as a hopeless case. Friends, political admirers and parasites turned away from him and with touching solidarity prostrated themselves before the new god. Archduke Otto, the heir presumptive. "You and my valet are my only friends,” the Archduke complained to his physician, Dr. Eisenmenger, in his characteristically tactless vein. When the Archduke recovered, he found himself being sent around as an imperial messenger boy, placed "at the disposal of the All Highest Orders of his Majesty.” He had wanted to do heroic things, but it (lid not take him long to discover that under Franz Joseph heroism was as great a handicap as a surplus of brains. He beheld through the mist of incense the carved image of a bronze Buddha, inscrutable and torturingly impersonal, his uncle, the Emperor. At each step he was confronted with obstruction, the smiling images of small Buddhas, old admirals decrepit generals, antiquated I-lofrats’ the survivors of a dead age. Franz Ferdinand was not in the crowd of the incense burners. While he had not a towering intellect, he had the good sense to see that the monarchy was headed toward a nirvana of destruction and death In order to forestall such a fate he wanted to overhaul the foundations of hi 3 future realm. The cardinal point of his policy was to take what he thought an excessive power from the Hungarians and divert it to the other nationalities of the empire. Iu order to weaken the influence of the Magyars he wanted to transform the dual monarchy °£ the Austrians

and Hungarians into a triune kingdom of Austrians, Hungarians and South Slavs. Serbia would not have been included as-—the letters published in these volumes show beyond doubt — he had no agressive Intentions against any of Austria’s neighbours. It shows the chaotic condition of prewar diplomacy that Serbia saw in Franz Ferdinand the most ferocious opponent of the Gross-Oesterreich policy. How greatly mistaken the Serbians were is evident from the letter which the Archduke wrote to his aide-de-camp about General Conrad von Hoetzendorf, chief of the General Staff:

‘Try to tame Conrad (the Archduke wrote) and make him stop shouting

about war. It would be, of course, tempting to roast the life out of Serbia and Montenegro, but we have no use for cheap laurels if by our intervention we can cause a general European imbroglio and have the enemy dn two or three different fronts. Just because a few foreign army captains talk nonsense Conrad does not need to mobilise. a corps.” If the Archduke’s ideas had been followed the World War might have had a different aspect. He wanted to revive the three Emperors’ alliance of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia. The Italian alliance, in his very emphatic opinion, was not worth the paper on wliiqh it had been covenanted.