Sonderband 3. „wir aber aus unsern vorhero sehr erschöpfften camergeföllen nicht hernemben khönnen…” – Beiträge zur österreichischen Wirtschafts- und Finanzgeschichte vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (1997)

Ronald E. Coons - Carey Goodman: An Audacious Proposal. A Memorandum Attributed to Finance Minister Karl Ludwig Freiherr von Bruck

An Audacious Proposal: A Memorandum Attributed to Karl I ,udwig von Brack

corroborating evidence of authorship15. Two apparent inconsistencies further complicate the task of attribution. The text’s peculiar comma usage differs from punctuation found in materials Bruck is known to have written. More substantively, the author’s warm embrace of monarchical sovereignty clashes with a frequently-met interpretation of the minister as a moderate liberal who favored the introduction of constitutional government into the Habsburg Monarchy16.

Such inconsistencies and ambiguities notwithstanding, several considerations nevertheless suggest there is reason to attribute the memorandum to the Finance Minister. In the first place, the testimony of his son may well have been based on personal knowledge and must therefore carry considerable weight. Secondly, it would appear that neither of the two copies included in the Nachlaß is the one to which the younger Brack referred in writing the Foreign Ministry in January 1866. In the opening sentence of his letter he explicitly stated that the manuscript he wished to edit bore the heading „Memoire“17, and in a passage struck from the draft of that letter he explained that the text „hat nur 40 Seiten halbbrüchig geschrieben und ist somit eine ganz kleine Arbeit“18. In contrast, neither of the two copies of the memorandum acquired by the Austrian National Library bears a title, while one version runs to forty-three pages and the other to forty-nine. It is therefore entirely possible that when the younger Brack wrote his superiors in 1866 he had at his disposal proof of his father’s authorship that the historian lacks, perhaps in the form of a draft with notations or corrections in the minister’s own hand. In that case the manuscript’s atypical punctuation could well have been the work either of a secretary to whom the author dictated the text or of a subsequent copyist.

Thirdly, the assumption that Brack’s liberal tendencies preclude his authorship of so conservative a memorandum is anything but secure. To be sure, Brack actively participated in deliberations that resulted in Franz Graf Stadion’s constitution of

On the confiscation of Brack’s papers and their subsequent release to his family see HHStA Wien, Minister Conferenz-Akten Z. 532/1860, which includes a „Verzeichniß der aus dem Nachlaße Sr. Ex- cellenz des Hn. Baron Bruck, herrührenden und an dessen Familie zurückzustellenden Papiere“, a copy of which has been kindly provided by Hon.-Prof. Dr. Christiane Thomas of the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, and Walter, Friedrich: Beiträge zur Feststellung der politischen Haltung und zum Kampf um die Rehabilitierung des Finanzministers Karl Ludwig Freiherm v. Bruck. In: Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 71 (1963), pp. 441-450.

16 On this point see, e. g., the observation in the diary of Alexander Freiherr von Hübner that „Stadion und Bruck, ohne im liberalen Serail geboren zu sein, glauben an die großen Errungenschaften von 1789“, cited in Friedj ung,Heinrich: Oesterreich von 1848 bis 1860. Bd. 1: Die Jahre der Revolution und der Reform 1848 bis 1851. Stuttgart-Berlin 1908, pp. 139-140. See also Franz Freiherr von Sommaruga’s statement in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. Vol. 3. Leipzig 1876, p. 387 to the effect that Brack „vertrat im Rathe der Krone stets das freisinnige Princip und lag stets im Kampfe mit der retrograden Partei“, which is copied verbatim from an article on Brack in: Unsere Zeit. Jahrbuch zum Conversations-Lexikon 4(1860), p. 399, and the categorical assertion in M a c a r t n e y, C. A. : The House of Austria. Edinburgh 1978, p. 115 that Brack was „a convinced constitutionalist“.

17 „Unter den von meinem verstorbenen Vater hinterlassenen Schriften befindet sich eine welche die Aufschrift,Memoire“ trägt ... “. HHStA Wien, AR, Fach 4, Karton 40, Convolut „Personalia Bro-Bru“, fol. 238r. Karl von Bruck to Ministry ofForeign Affairs, 17 January 1866.

18 ÖNB Wien, HSS, Codex Series nova 32.687, fol. 2V, Karl von Bruck to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 17 January 1866 (draft).

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