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 Ludwig von Brack

trative reorganization might have for relations among the monarchy’s several nationalities. In retrospect, judged as a treatise on administrative organization the manuscript was less radical than it was simply inadequate.

Analysis of the memorandum should not, however, stop at its deficiencies. Even granted that Bruck offered no comprehensive solution to complex financial and administrative problems, it is only fair to stress that the memorandum was not designed to present a detailed program of bureaucratic reorganization. Rather it was meant to mobilize support for the creation of a commission that would secretly develop such a program under his guidance. It therefore made tactical sense to encourage readers to conclude that the only reasonable approach to solving a desperate budgetary situation lay in undertaking fundamental reform. The emphasis on financial matters and the lack of sustained attention to administrative details and political realities may, in other words, have been intentional. Stressing the urgency of the situation gave Bruck a measure of hope that he might successfully counteract the vigorous defense that Interior Minister Bach and his associates could be expected to mount against any attack upon a centralized bureaucratic structure that was their own handiwork. Indeed, in light of the tensions that are known to have existed between Bruck and the Interior Minister it is by no means impossible that the memorandum was intended to serve as an opening salvo in a campaign to undermine Bach’s position within the cabinet and ultimately in the eyes of the Emperor42. In that case it is possible that once the manuscript had been prepared, Bruck concluded that under prevailing circumstances Bach’s position was unassailable and that he consigned the memorandum to his private papers.

Such an interpretation is admittedly speculative. It has the advantage, however, of offering a plausible explanation for why Bruck, who in the summer 1855 appears to have been ready to argue that administrative change was an absolute fiscal necessity, nevertheless refrained from actively advancing a program of extensive reform so long as the Interior Minister continued to enjoy the Emperor’s favor43. Only after Bach’s dismissal in the summer of 1859 in the wake of the Battle of Solferino and the Laxenburg Manifesto did Bruck openly attack a system that was by then de42 This could well explain why Brack anachronistically suggested a return to the Hofkanzleien of the prerevolutionary period, since such a step would have dissolved Bach’s basis of power at the Interior Ministry. On relations between the two ministers see, e. g., Kempen von F i cht ens ta mm, Johann Freiherr: Das Tagebuch des Polizeiministers Kempen von 1848 bis 1859, ed. Josef Karl Mayr. Wien- Leipzig 1931, p. 367, which contains the following entry for 30 May 1855: „Nach 1 Uhr war ich bei Graf Grünne. Als ich ihm sagte, es verlaute, die Spannung zwischen Baron Brack und Bach sei im Zunehmen, erwiderte er: .Desto besser, vielleicht beißt der erstere den letzteren aus1.“ On Bach’s displeasure at Brack’s appointment see the introduction by Waltraud H e i n d 1 to ÖMR Abt. 3, Bd. 4, p. IX.

43 It is true that early in 1857 Brack did go so far as to send the Interior Ministry a set of recommendations concerning direct taxation, one of whose major features was, as B r a n d t has observed, „der Rückzug des Staates aus dem untersten Bereich der individuellen Veranlagung und Einhebung und seine Ersetzung durch Organe der Selbstverwaltung“; see Brandt: Der österreichische Neoabsolutismus, p. 553; FA Wien, 21784/FM ex 1856, Brack to Minister of the Interior, 6 January 1857; FA Wien, 1055/FM ex 1857, Brack to Minister of the Interior, 15 May 1857: The minister’s attempt at partial reform did not, however, meet with success.

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