Gina Conrad von Hötzendorf

Gina von Reininghaus (1903)

Virginia "Gina" Laura Antonia Countess Conrad von Hötzendorf (born February 27, 1879 in Trieste , born Agujari , divorced from Reininghaus , adopted Agujari-Kárász ; † November 24, 1961 in Semmering ) was a long-time lover and then the second wife of Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf , chief of General Staff of Austria-Hungary in the First world war .

Her relationship with Conrad von Hötzendorf caused a sensation at the time and is now considered to be significant for Conrad's actions, especially for his push for war. The legal structure that made her marriage to Conrad von Hötzendorf possible was discussed in the marriage law debate in Austria in the period after the First World War. Your records about Conrad are an important source for historians, but were banned in the Austrian corporate state and in 1935 led to the adoption of the "Tradition Protection Act".

Life

Origin and first marriage

Virginia Agujari was born in Trieste in 1879 as the daughter of the Italian portrait painter Tito Agujari . On January 21, 1896, at the age of 16, she married the wealthy Styrian industrialist Johann (Hans) Edler von Reininghaus from the Reininghaus family of brewers in Graz . At the end of 1896, she gave birth to her first son, Peter Reininghaus , who took over the brewery in 1920. By the age of 20 she was a mother of three and by 1906 the couple had three more children. In the winter of 1902/1903 the couple moved from Graz to Vienna, where the "witty, amiable woman" quickly made herself popular in society.

Affair with Conrad von Hötzendorf

In January 1907 Gina von Reininghaus was introduced to the then 54-year-old widower Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf at a dinner in the Viennese house of Baron Victor von Kalchberg, President of the Austrian Lloyd in Trieste, whom she had already noticed seven years earlier at a reception in Trieste was. Conrad, who had been appointed Chief of Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces a few weeks earlier, then visited her at least once a week in her house at Operngasse 8 in Vienna. When he proposed to her in March 1907, Gina von Reinighaus initially turned him down, mainly because of her children.

But Conrad continued to visit Gina von Reininghaus and proved to be a "most loyal friend and protector" for her. From 1907 to 1915 he created a “Diary of My Sorrows”, which consisted of more than 3,000 enthusiastic letters to her, which he never sent and which she only found out about after his death. For example, he wrote that only she could save him from the abyss of despair, that his fate was in her hands. Some of his letters to von Reininghaus are frequently quoted by historians, such as the letter of June 28, 1914, in which Conrad wrote in relation to the impending war: “It will be a hopeless fight, but it must be waged because it is so old Monarchy and such a glorious army cannot perish without glory. "

In May 1907, Gina von Reininghaus admitted to him that she no longer loved her husband. By the end of 1908 at the latest, the two entered into a love affair. Hans von Reininghaus tolerated this, because he had granted himself freedom in marriage and also saw the opportunity to gain access to higher social circles if he and his wife attended the same balls and dinners as Conrad. According to some historians, the affair was one of the reasons for the conservative Austrian imperial family to dismiss Conrad at the end of 1911. This gave him the opportunity to intensify the relationship with Gina von Reininghaus, but was reinstated as Chief of the General Staff at the end of 1912. Even when in the weeks before the beginning of the First World War, during the July crisis , Conrad was demonstratively sent on vacation to deceive the public about the seriousness of the situation, he chose the Klammschlössel not far from Innichen , the home of Richard von, as his place of residence Stern and his wife Maria, who was Gina von Reininghaus' closest friend, to be there with his lover.

After the outbreak of war, Gina von Reininghaus was barely able to see Conrad for a long time. Christmas 1914 was the first Christmas they had spent separately since 1907. The fact that Conrad spent considerable time every night writing letters to her, even during those months of the war, gave rise to speculation about his mental state. Maximilian von Hoen , commander of the Austro-Hungarian war press headquarters , considered his relationship with Gina von Reininghaus to be a sign of senility and would have considered his resignation appropriate. Even someone like Josef Redlich , who had supported Conrad for years, found it surprising that even during the war he took so much time for private correspondence. But in January 1915, Minister of War Alexander von Krobatin approved that Gina von Reininghaus was allowed to travel to Conrad for four days at the headquarters of the Allied High Command in Teschen . That caused a stir in Vienna. According to Josef Redlich, rumors circulated that Wilhelm II intervened personally to make this visit possible.

Divorce from Hans von Reininghaus

When the war began, social life in Vienna had changed, which meant that Hans von Reininghaus no longer benefited from his wife's relationship to the same extent as before. And when, after his wife's visit to Conrad von Hötzendorf's headquarters in Teschen, the gossip in Vienna continued to increase, Hans von Reininghaus informed his wife in early March 1915 - immediately before her lover visited her in Vienna - that he wanted a divorce. The children together, who worried about their mother's happiness, also agreed. In addition, Conrad von Hötzendorf's deeply religious mother, who would have been a thorn in the side of her son's marriage to a divorced woman, died in 1915 at the age of 90.

But there was another obstacle to a marriage between Gina von Reininghaus and Conrad: According to Austrian law at the time, divorce and remarriage were not possible for Catholics. A change in citizenship and religion was an option because Hungary had more liberal marriage laws. For Conrad this was not an option - as an atheist he did not want to switch to Protestantism , and as a Hungarian he would hardly have been accepted by the emperor as chief of staff. Therefore, on August 25, 1915, Gina von Reininghaus was adopted by the Austro-Hungarian Field Marshal Lieutenant Ernst Kárász through the mediation of Conrad's confidante, Paul Schulz , Vice-President of the Court of Auditors , and thus received Hungarian citizenship and converted to Protestantism. After the Royal Hungarian Court of Justice ruled that her first marriage was dissolved on October 2, 1915, she was entitled to remarry under Hungarian law.

Since her first husband was an Austrian citizen, it was disputed whether Gina von Reininghaus was able to marry an Austrian a second time under Austrian law. However, a request from Franz Conrad was approved by the Austrian authorities. The case "was absent in hardly a marriage law debate after 1918" ( Ulrike Harmat :) in Austria.

Second marriage

The marriage of Gina and Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf was concluded on October 19, 1915 in a simple ceremony in the Protestant Dorotheerkirche in Vienna. Gina Conrad von Hötzendorf did not leave her husband's side throughout the war, apart from brief visits to Vienna and Graz. Some said that she behaved like a queen in Teschen and that the Allied High Command considered Conrad's court. On the other hand, she was described as a “very likeable woman”, “very Italian type, very well dressed, with very good and calm manners and in every respect a lady of the better society”, “artistically and especially musically inclined, used to luxury and expensive things . “Up to the highest circles they were unsure how to meet her after remarriage. Even the nominal army commander Friedrich Archduke of Austria did not want to decide for himself whether he should socially recognize Gina as Conrad's wife, but asked the Lieutenant Field Marshal Johann Herbert Graf Herberstein to ask Emperor Franz Joseph personally about this in Vienna . He didn't want to put anything in the way of the couple. On the other hand, the future Empress Zita declared that she did not know any Baroness Conrad, but only a woman from Reininghaus. Paul Schulz said in 1916 that Gina Conrad “interfered in everything, and above all she tried very hard for the Italian offensive”. Because of her Italian origins, rumors then surfaced that her influence played a role in Austria's defeats on the front against Italy in 1916. During the war, Gina Conrad presided over charity events for war invalids; she was chairman of the "Conrad von Hötzendorf Foundation for War Blind". In this function, a waltz composition was dedicated to her in 1917.

After the Allied High Command moved from Teschen to Baden, the Kaiser forbade the presence of women in the headquarters, so Gina Conrad von Hötzendorf initially lived in Vienna. Emperor Karl justified the dismissal of her husband as Chief of Staff in 1917 with the fact that the marriage (tellingly, Karl put the word "married" in quotation marks) of Franz and Gina Conrad von Hötzendorf "was sharply criticized by a large part of the army" and that thereupon a "women and protection economy" had begun in the headquarters. At the urging of his wife, Conrad personally applied to the Kaiser for retirement after his removal, but the Kaiser was able to persuade him to continue working for the army in Tyrol.

After the collapse of Austria-Hungary, Conrad von Hötzendorf only received the pension of a colonel, and Gina lived with him in modest circumstances in two simple rooms in Innsbruck. In the inflationary years after the war, she contributed to the family income by doing translation work for the journalist and author Karl Friedrich Nowak , such as translating papers from the estate of the Duke of Reichstadt , son of Napoleon Bonaparte , from Italian into German.

Autobiography

Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf died in 1925. Karl Friedrich Nowak, who had been closely connected to him since the war years, worked on a complete edition of the writings he left behind. The publication of even the most private letters, which Gina Conrad von Hötzendorf sought for financial reasons, was rejected by Nowak out of consideration for the deceased's reputation. When the Austrian State Archives considered placing the estate under monument protection, Gina Conrad assured the director of the archive, Ludwig Bittner , that she would not sell the letters abroad.

After Nowak's sudden death, Gina Conrad von Hötzendorf published her autobiography in 1935 under the title Mein Leben mit Conrad von Hötzendorf - his spiritual legacy . The publication of Conrad's private notes was criticized by contemporaries as "downright embarrassing". It was even more serious that in the book she openly expressed Conrad's opinion about the unfortunate conditions in the Austrian army and state leadership, which is why the book was banned in Austria. At that time, leading politicians in the Austro-Fascist corporate state tried to present Austria's recent monarchical past in a positive light. The fact that the Austrian government believed to recognize in that book "denigrations of outstanding personalities of old Austria, such as the emperor Franz Joseph, the field marshal Conrad von Hötzendorf, the counts Ährenthal and Berchtold, etc." led to the creation of a "federal law for the protection of the reputation of Austria ", The so-called" Tradition Protection Act ", was enacted.

Gina Conrad von Hötzendorf was buried in the Hietzinger Friedhof in Vienna in the honorary grave of her husband Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, which was rededicated as a historical grave in 2012.

Reception in history

The connection between the married woman von Reininghaus and the Chief of Staff Conrad was widely criticized at the time and "was therefore largely ignored by the field marshal's hagiographs". This relationship takes up all the more space in the recently published historical works and biographies of Conrad von Hötzendorf, because today's historians estimate the influence of Gina von Reininghaus on Conrad as great, especially at the beginning of the First World War. Kronenbitter speaks of the "repeatedly guaranteed persistence" with which Conrad cultivated the relationship himself in July 1914, and of the fact that he was therefore "only half-hearted" in the matter.

Conrad is considered to be an important part of the so-called war party in Austria, the advocates of a military conflict with Serbia. Already in 1913 and 1914 he had unsuccessfully called for a war against Serbia twenty-five times, and then played an important role in the July crisis of 1914, which culminated with the outbreak of the First World War. Some historians and sociologists associate Conrad's insistence on a war with his wooing Gina von Reininghaus. Some of his letters were about the fact that if he emerged a hero from a war, he could marry his mistress. But for that Conrad first needed a war. A diary entry from 1908 is cited as an example: “The times are serious and the coming year will most likely bring the war. ... But if I come back - which I only shyly hope - crowned with success - then Gina, I break all fetters in order to achieve the highest happiness of my life, to achieve 'you'. But what if things turn out differently and everything drags on in lazy peace, Gina, what then? ” Conrad, characterized as a“ warmonger ”, is described as“ monomaniacally fixated on the great war and great love ”. Helmut Kuzmics sums up: "Partly he was looking for success in war in order to win over his beloved."

In his prehistory to the First World War, Christopher Clark emphasizes The Sleepwalkers :

“The importance of this relationship cannot be overestimated; it was at the center of Conrad von Hötzendorf's life from 1907 until the outbreak of war, and it suppressed all other worries, even the military and political questions that came to his desk. ... Conrad ... even saw the war as a means to get Gina into his possession. Only as a victorious war hero, Conrad believed, would he be able to remove social obstacles and survive the scandal associated with marrying a prominent, divorced woman. In a letter to Gina he fantasized about the return of a 'Balkan War', the winner's laurel wreath on his head, how he ignored all warnings and made her his wife. "

Hew Strachan went so far as to ask what would have happened in 1914 if Conrad had not hoped to marry Gina von Reininghaus if the war had been successful. And Franz-Stefan Gady titled a post on the website of The National Interest even with the words The Scandalous Love Affair That Started World War I .

Historians often quote Gina Conrad von Hötzendorf's autobiography, mainly because of the details it contains about Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf. And Ulrike Harmat used the autobiography as a source for her legal historical study from 1999 on the conflict over marriage law in Austria 1918–1938, in which she deals with the problems of Gina von Reininghaus' divorce and second marriage.

Fonts

• My life with Conrad von Hötzendorf - his spiritual legacy . Grethlein, Leipzig 1935 ( DNB ).

literature

• Christopher Clark: The sleepwalkers. DVA, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-421-04359-7
• Gudrun Wedel: Gina Countess Conrad von Hötzendorf. In: Autobiographies of Women. A lexicon . Böhlau, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20585-0 , pp. 157-158.
• Ulrike Harmat: Divorce and Remarriage in Austria-Hungary. The Second Marriage of Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf. In: Austrian History Yearbook , 32/2001, pp. 69-103. doi: 10.1017 / S0067237800011176
• Lawrence Sondhaus: Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf. Architect of the Apocalypse. Humanities Press, Boston 2000.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Broucek : A general in the twilight: The memories of Edmund Glaises von Horstenau. Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., Graz 1980, p. 279.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Ulrike Harmat: marriage on revocation? The conflict over marriage law in Austria 1918–1938 , (= studies on European legal history 121). Verlag Vittorio Klostermann , Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 978-3-465-03034-8 , pp. 147-152.
3. ↑ Gina Countess Conrad von Hötzendorf: My life with Conrad von Hötzendorf . Ed .: Grethlein. Leipzig 1935, p. 9 .
4. ^ [1] Sport and Salon. Illustrated magazine for the genteel world . Vienna / Budapest, March 28, 1903, p. 8.
5. ↑ Gina Countess Conrad von Hötzendorf: My life with Conrad von Hötzendorf . Ed .: Grethlein. Leipzig 1935, p. 12 .
6. ↑ Gina Countess Conrad von Hötzendorf: My life with Conrad von Hötzendorf . Ed .: Grethlein. Leipzig 1935, p. 15 .
7. ↑ ^{a b} Christopher Clark : Die Schlafwandler , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 2013, ISBN 978-3-421-04359-7 , p. 147
8. ↑ Günther Kronenbitter: "War in Peace". The leadership of the Austro-Hungarian army and the great power politics of Austria-Hungary 1906–1914. Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, p. 462.
9. ^ Gunther E. Rothenberg : The Army of Francis Joseph . Purdue University Press, West Lafayette 1976, p. 164.
10. ↑ Peter Broucek: A General in the Twilight. The memories of Edmund Glaise von Horstenau. Böhlau, Graz 1980, p. 280.
11. ↑ Lawrence Sondhaus: Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf: Architect of the Apocalypse. Humanities Press, Boston 2000. pp. 158-170.
12. ↑ marriage on revocation? The conflict over marriage law in Austria 1918–1938 (= studies on European legal history 121). Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main, 1999, p. 152.
13. ^ Dieter Hackl: The offensive spirit of Conrad von Hötzendorf . Diploma thesis, Vienna 2009, p. 15. PDF
14. ^ Elisabeth Kovacs: Fall or Rescue of the Danube Monarchy. Political documents on Emperor and King Charles I (IV). Böhlau, Vienna 2004, pp. 143–144.
15. ↑ Peter Broucek: A General in the Twilight. The memories of Edmund Glaise von Horstenau. , Böhlau, Graz 1980, p. 342.
16. ^ Anton Mayr-Harting: The downfall. Austria-Hungary 1848–1922. Amalthea, Vienna 1988, p. 775.
17. ↑ Lawrence Sondhaus: Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf. Architect of the Apocalypse. Humanities Press, Boston 2000, pp. 187-188.
18. ^ Conrad von Hötzendorf Foundation for the War Blind. In: Deutsches Volksblatt , Vienna, June 8, 1916, p. 3.
19. ↑ Luis Kunz: Moon night on the Olsa. Waltz for piano. Dedicated to Her Excellency the Baroness Gina Conrad von Hötzendorf. Teschen, Sigmund Stuks, 1917.
20. ↑ Personal notes of Emperor Karl I, reproduced in: Elisabeth Kovacs: Untergang oder Rettung der Donaumonarchy. Political documents on Emperor and King Charles I (IV) . Böhlau, Vienna 2004, p. 606.
21. ^ Eva Macho: Karl Friedrich Nowak (1882-1932). Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2008, pp. 125-126.
22. ^ Eva Macho: Karl Friedrich Nowak (1882-1932). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2008, pp. 226-256.
23. ↑ Review in: Gasschutz und Luftschutz , Berlin, September 1935, pp. 246–248. PDF
24. ^ Review, by Oberstlt. Eugen Bircher, in: Allgemeine Schweizerische Militärzeitung . Volume 82, Issue 9, 1936, p. 577. PDF ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the homepage of the swiss electronic academic library service . 
25. ^ Protocols of the Council of Ministers of the First Republic. Department IX / Volume 3. Cabinet Dr. Kurt Schuschnigg. May 31, 1935 to November 30, 1935. Vienna 1995, p. 20.
26. ↑ Federal Law Gazette 1935, Item 60, No. 214. PDF
27. ^ Christian Kniescheck: Historical exhibitions in Vienna 1918–1938. A contribution to the exhibition analysis and historical culture. Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M., 1998, pp. 273-274. PDF
28. ^ Website of Hedwig Abraham: Art and Culture in Vienna
29. ^ Conrad von Hötzendorf and the AOK. Austrian State Archives .
30. ↑ Günther Kronenbitter: "War in Peace". The leadership of the Austro-Hungarian army and the great power politics of Austria-Hungary 1906–1914. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, p. 478.
31. ^ Samuel R. Williamson, Jr .: The Origins of World War I , The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1988.
32. ↑ Hans Rauscher : Manic-depressive general. Der Standard, November 29, 2013.
33. ^ Günther Haller: The Viennese Warmonger. The press, March 8, 2014.
34. ↑ Helmut Kuzmics : The kuk army habit in the First World War. In: Emotion, Habitus and First World War. Sociological studies on the military fall of the Habsburg monarchy. V&R, Göttingen 2013, p. 233.
35. ^ Annika Mombauer : The First World War: Inevitable, Avoidable, Improbable or Desirable? Recent Interpretations On War Guilt and the War's Origins . In: German History Vol. 25 No. 1, p. 89.
36. ^ Franz-Stefan Gady: The Scandalous Love Affair That Started World War I. In: The National Interest . June 12, 2014, accessed June 28, 2014 .