Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 46. (1998)

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

Officers versus Diplomats

Gürtler’s candidacy.100 After all three of those officers had refused, the war ministry then suggested either Captain Maximilian von Thury or Captain Count Alexander Dzieduszycki. As a member of the court nobility, the latter met with the archduke’s approval and consequently received the nod from the emperor.101

At no other posts did the General Staff consistently send members of the nobility, even when the resident civilian diplomats came from the most blue-blooded circles. Although the military attaché in St. Petersburg after 1906 was regularly drawn from the aristocracy (Prince Gottfried Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst 1902-1907, Count Lelio Spannocchi 1907-1911 and Prince Franz Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfiiirst 1911-1914), the slot had previously been filled by two officers from the middle class. Prince Franz Hohenlohe’s familial connection to his predecessor but one certainly earned him quick entrée into St. Petersburg society, where his mediatized background also ensured a warm reception at the embassy. The Grand Duchess Marie Pawlowna told him that she hoped he would feel as at home there as „Gottfried“ had.102 In the same period however, the army sent bourgeois officers as military atta- chés to London (Koloman Horváth 1911-1914), Paris (Julius Vidalé 1912-1914), and Rome (August Mietzl 1906-1912). Horváth had been preceded in England by Prince Friedrich Liechtenstein and Vidalé in France by Count Robert Lamezan- Salins. As Mietzl’s successor in the Italian capital, Conrad chose Count Stanislaus Szeptycki, the scion of a Polish magnate clan in eastern Galicia. In other words, a great name appeared desirable when such a candidate exhibited other, even more attractive qualities as well.

In contrast to the diplomats, the military and naval attachés similarly possessed few familial or other connections in foreign capitals. Among the exceptions, Prince Gottfried Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst arrived in St. Petersburg in 1902 already familiar with local society through his mother, Princess Marie Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berle- burg, whose family had lived in Russia for several generations. Baron Franz Preu- schen may well have seemed the obvious choice for naval attaché in Washington, given the American ties through his maternal grandfather, General James Pinkney Henderson, governor of Texas. Likewise, the General Staff possibly hoped to flatter the French by sending the descendant of an old noble family from Guyenne, Count Robert Lamezan-Salins, as military attaché to Paris.103 On the other hand, Count Stanislaus Szeptycki’s status as a Galician Pole and the animosity of the Russians toward his brother, the Greek-Catholic archbishop of Lemberg, put an end to any

100 I b i d e m: Colonel Carl Bardolff to the war ministry, January 8, 1914; and „Referat zu Präs. Nr. 18.158 von 1913“.

101 Ibidem: Bardolff to the war ministry, February 19, 1914.

102 Hohenlohe to Conrad, March 14, 1911, reproduced in Conrad: Aus meiner Dienstzeit. Vol. 2, p. 212- 13.

103 For the Lamezan-Salins, see Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon. Ed. Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Vol. 4. Wien-Köln-Graz: Böhlau, 1969, p. 414-15; Polski Slownik Biograficzny, vol. XVII, p. 425.

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