Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 46. (1998)

GODSEY, William D. Jr.: Officers vs. Diplomats: Bureaucracy and Foreign Policy in Austria-Hungary 1906–1914

William D. Godsey

The heavy, traditional landed element in the diplomatic corps, some two-thirds of the whole, was not reflected in the backgrounds of the officers. Less than one quarter (22%) of the fathers of the military attachés came from landowning families, while merchants and professionals, who made up only a miniscule portion of diplomatic fathers, absorbed the same percentage. Given the propensity of the military caste literally to reproduce itself, officers not surprisingly sired the highest ratio (35%) of our sample. Finally, state officials constituted only 12.5% of the total, as opposed to 17% among the diplomats. Most such bureaucrats, as well as the officers, tended furthermore to come from the middling ranks. Relatively typical was the career of the father of Oskar von Hranilovic-Czvetassin, who retired as a government financial counselor (Finanzrat). Of the eleven officers among the fathers, most had risen only to captain or colonel. Only four became generals, those of Baron Wladimir Giesl, Baron Karl Bienerth, Victor von Bilimek and Moritz von Fischer. Lower middle- class origins, all but unknown among the civilian diplomats, occurred occasionally among the officers stationed abroad. August Mietzl, for six years military attaché in Rome, was the son of a non-commissioned officer, while the father of the naval attaché in Washington, Maximilian Burstyn, had worked for the navy as an electrician.

As a group, then, the attachés presented a social profile much less exalted than that of the diplomats. Even among those who belonged to the „second society,“ few could boast the illustrious connections so common among their civilian counterparts. Baron Karl Bienerth (military attaché in Berlin 1908-18), grandson of the statesman Anton von Schmerling and brother of the minister-president, and Napoleon von Louis (naval attaché in London 1906-1909), the son of a jurist on the Oberster Gerichts- und Kassationshof in Vienna, constituted unusual cases in that regard.97 Although the court nobility undeniably made up a higher percentage of the attachés than in the officer corps at large, the high proportion of those from the middle class suggests that social origin played a very subordinate role in their selection, particularly in comparison to the practice in the Ballhausplatz.98 Further, resplendent ancestry rarely seems to have been a factor in assignments to a specific post. That in Madrid, created on the express wish of the king of Spain, proved the most obvious exception. Its first incumbent was Prince Georg Schwarzenberg. When he returned to active service in 1913, the Chief of the General Staff initiated the appointment of Captain Hans Gürtler as his replacement.99 Conrad reckoned however without the interference of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, who advocated sending a representative of the aristocracy to the Spanish capital. The heir proposed the names of two Princes Liechtenstein and Count Eduard Kielmansegg and vetoed

For the background and a short biography of Louis, whose family emigrated from France to Galicia, see the articles in Polski Slownik Biograficzny. Ed. Polska Akadémia Nauk Instytut Historii. Breslau-Warsaw-Cracow-Danzig: Polska Akadémia Nauk, 1972, vol. XVII, p. 571-75.

98 For an introductory discussion of the social origins of the Habsburg officer corps, see D é a k, István: Nobles and Not-So-Nobles in the Officer Corps of the Dual Monarchy. In: Etudes Danubiennes 4/2 (1988), p. 123-32.

99 KA, KM Präs. 1913, 47-12/7: „Einsichtsakt des k. und k. Chef des Generalstabes,“ November 12, 1913.

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