Heinrich I of Hanau-Hořovice

Heinrich von Hanau - with full name: Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Ludwig Herman von Hanau , later also Heinrich Hanau (* December 8, 1842 Wilhelmshöhe Palace in Kassel ; † July 15, 1917 in Prague ) - was a son of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm I of Hessen-Kassel and a political writer who propagated reform ideas for Austria-Hungary .

Life

Hořovice Castle

Heinrich was the fifth son (the eighth child) of the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm and his morganatic wife Gertrude , later Princess of Hanau and Hořowitz. Until the German War in 1866 he served as a lieutenant in his father's bodyguard. After the annexation of Electorate Hesse by Prussia , he followed his father into exile in Bohemia to the family fideikommiss -gut Schloss Hořovice (Horowitz) and the family's city palace in Prague.

As the only one of the sons of the deposed elector, he fought - in vain - for the confiscated property of his father located in Hesse and also became politically active. He joined the federalist movement founded by Constantin Frantz and tried to influence politics by publishing a pamphlet. Later Heinrich, who was excluded from the succession with his brothers because of his father's morganatic marriage, came to terms with the final loss of Hesse.

Before he took over the title of Prince of Hanau and the family affidavit of Hanau-Hořovice, he led an unsteady wandering life. He did not implement his plan to settle in Hesse. In 1866 he had to give up the shell of a hunting lodge that had already been started near Großenritte .

Heinrich converted to the Roman Catholic faith in Paris on June 5, 1884 . There he also accumulated huge debts, from which his older brother had to "release" him. Basically, he had problems dealing with money. He was musically gifted, studied art and music, sang himself and started a singing school.

In 1905, after the death of his older brothers Moritz , Wilhelm and Karl , who died childless , he became the fourth prince of Hanau and zu Hořowitz and moved into the family estates in Bohemia. He was very interested in the nationality question in the kuk -Doppelmonarchie and was a supporter of Trias idea of Prince Alois of Liechtenstein . To this end, he published several cards that were supposed to propagate the idea.

He married Martha Rieger late on June 4, 1917 (born October 26, 1876 in Bischofsburg , † March 10, 1943 in Prague). There were no children from the marriage. Just a few weeks after the wedding, he died of a fall on the smooth parquet floor in his Hořovice chateau. The widow later lived in Berlin , where she had his remains transferred in 1922.

With his death in 1917, the Hořovice line became extinct and the chateau became part of the state. In 1922 Heinrich's great-nephew, Count Heinrich von Schaumburg, son of Friedrich August von Hanau , successfully claimed the inheritance. His family stayed in Hořovice until after the end of World War II the castle was confiscated under the Beneš decrees . It is still state-owned to this day.

Combat pamphlet against the Prussian occupation of Hessen-Kassel

Heinrich published in 1876, as Heinrich Prinz von Hanau, a pamphlet called Absolutism and Federalism or The Source of All Evil and Its Cure . It was part of a series of anti-Prussian propaganda pamphlets that exiled circles in the Electorate of Hesse published during these years. The book, which ostensibly purported to deal with the subject of federalism, interpreted it to the effect that the injustice that had occurred against the King of Hanover and the Elector of Hesse and their states could be redressed . Otherwise the fate of 1866 would sooner or later develop into a catastrophe , because in truth the Germans are a people of peoples and it is the merit of the German princes to have preserved their tribal characteristics. Heinrich hoped that

“ React to the deeper needs of the German nation and its tribes against the pressure of the Prussian unitary state that is suffocating them, and in this reaction find themselves instructed to hold onto power and, respectively, to reconnect with the power that exists for their protection and satisfaction in the expelled dynasties was . "

As a solution, like Constantin Frantz, he called for a Central European confederation up to the mouth of the Danube as a practical realization of federalism.

Incidentally, the script was ultramontane , anti-capitalist and at the same time anti-socialist and anti-democratic . For Heinrich von Hanau, democracy was a game of dice and gamble and a humbug like no greater one has ever been invented in the world . His federalism, however, was based on the belief in a divine world government .

Later he dealt intensively with the nationality problem of the Habsburg monarchy . According to his writing from 1876, the idea of ​​nationality sat like a stake in the flesh of Austria . As a solution, he suggested the amalgamation of Austria with a federally structured Germany.

Nationalities in Austria-Hungary. In: William Robert Shepherd : Historical Atlas. New York 1911.

Reform proposals to the nationality problem of the Habsburg monarchy

Trias map of the Habsburg Monarchy

Trias map of Hanau

In 1909 he published as Heinrich Hanau with the Viennese cartographic publisher Freytag & Berndt , simultaneously in four languages ​​of the monarchy, the triad map of the Habsburg monarchy . On the basis of a Freytag & Berndt map of the monarchy, he proposed a tripartite division of Austria-Hungary into Austria , Hungary and Illyria .

• Illyria should consist of Bosnia , Herzegovina , Dalmatia , Croatia and Slavonia , Carniola , the areas of Carinthia and Styria south of the Drava , Gorizia and Gradisca , Trieste and Istria .
• For the loss of Croatia and Slavonia, Hungary was to receive Galicia and Bukowina , as well as the Polish part of Austrian Silesia .
• According to the proposal, Austria only included the Alpine (up to the Drava) and Sudeten countries .

Hanau's aim was to achieve a settlement with the Slavs of the multi-ethnic state by creating a South Slavic state within the monarchy, but Austria and Hungary would still include millions of Slavs and Romans . The proposal to create a predominantly German Austria and a predominantly Magyar Hungary shows that the safeguarding of rule still had priority over the principle of national autonomy .

Three cards to complement the Trias card

In the following year he wrote in the foreword to Drei Karten to complement the triad map : It is my endeavor, as far as possible, to do justice to all peoples of the Habsburg monarchy, which is why it is necessary to take account of the individual nationalities within the triad idea . He had recognized the gross inadequacies of trialism and tried to alleviate them through individual moderate autonomies .

Strange appears Hanau "old dream" South Tyrol for a small church government in Rome to exchange to the Pope barely lift unbearable captivity .

Map of the division of Bohemia

In Hanau next card of the division of Bohemia into a kingdom of Bohemia and in a Archduchy Bohemia and Eger a division which was Sudetenländer as excited along the linguistic borders. The Czechs have to do without a kingdom bounded by a mountain range, but rather be satisfied with the language border . As a compensation, the naturalized Prague Heinrich Hanau at least renounced his hardly practicable suggestion from the previous card to leave part of Prague with German Bohemia . He believed in a coexistence of a Czech and a German Bohemian (and Moravian ) as in the Duchy of Saxony-Altenburg and the Kingdom of Saxony , but did not recognize that this was a historically developed situation, where there were also no communication problems due to different nationalities and Language gave.

New trias map of the Habsburg monarchy

In the final work of his reform proposals for the Habsburg Monarchy, the New Trias Map of the Habsburg Monarchy , Hanau extended his principle of certain autonomy to all areas of the monarchy in order to finally break with the pernicious centralism . The aim was to create ethnically homogeneous structures by creating 21 partially new autonomous crown lands.

Austria should consist of:

• Archduchy of Bohemia-Eger (in the German-speaking peripheral areas of Bohemia)
• Kingdom of Bohemia (in the Czech core of Bohemia)
• Silesia (Austrian Silesia, without Polish Teschen and with German-speaking North Moravia)
• Galicia (the western part, whereby the border line to the Ukrainian part should run far east of the language border)
• Moravia (the Czech core)
• Lower Austria (with South Moravia and the language island of Neubistritz )
• Upper Austria
• Salzburg
• Tyrol (also with Vorarlberg and the Trentino)
• Carinthia (east of Villach only north of the Drau)
• Styria (excluding the southern part of Slovenia)

Hungary should consist of:

• "Slovakia" (whereby the author kept more to the language border)
• West Hungary (capital Pressburg )
• Eastern Hungary (capital Budapest - division of Hungary along the Danube because it is too big for a crown land)
• Romanian ( Banat and Greater Oradine Region )
• Transylvania (with 4 German, 5 Hungarian and 7 Romanian cantons )
• Ruthenia (capital Chernivtsi - consisting of Eastern Galicia, Bukovina and the later Carpathian Ukraine )

Croatia (new name instead of Illyria) should consist of:

• "Slovenia" (northern border Drava, with Trieste)
• Croatia and Slavonia (with most of Istria)
• Dalmatia (contrary to the wish of the majority Croatian population for unification with Croatia)
• Bosnia and Herzegovina

Ultimately, through the development of autonomous, ethnically homogeneous structures, Hanau developed from trialism to a mixture of Crown Land federalism and the Greater Austrian concept. The national self-determination of the peoples of the monarchy in 21 autonomous crown lands actually dissolved his original concept of the Triassic, which nevertheless remained rather functionless. But Hanau's ideas also suffered from the vagueness that clung to his concessions of certain autonomies . However, he was unable to take advantage of the dissolution of the monarchy into smaller units, which would have allowed a more precise differentiation according to ethnographic borders. Despite increasing attention to detail and balance, the author was ultimately unable to master the complex ethnographic conditions of the multi-ethnic state. Its division showed weaknesses, in addition to the breaking up of larger national units and the complete disregard for the Italian minority, also with the confusion of peoples in the Banat, the Serbs in Slavonia, the Ukrainians in Galicia and the peoples in Hungary.

Map of a proposal for the future of Alsace-Lorraine

In his last card, Hanau took on another topic: the transformation of Alsace-Lorraine . The bad experience the German Reich had with the administrative reform of the Reichsland carried out in 1911 prompted him to propose that the country be divided between Prussia and Baden according to the principle of divide et impera . The Alsace and a small part of Lorraine should go to Baden, because that would Allamannen to Allamannen he said in the preface to the map. That would make a happy kingdom in which the Alsatians would more easily forget their French feelings than before . He intended to incorporate most of Lorraine into a Prussian province of Rhine-Moselle that was to be formed . As compensation, Prussia was to cede Lüneburg and the Wendland to the Braunschweig to be rounded off . The province of Hessen-Nassau was to be converted into the province of Kurhessen with ancillary areas. The secondary areas that Hanau had intended for its old homeland were parts of Nassau and Frankfurt am Main .

Another suggestion presented by the card was the return of North Schleswig to Denmark in exchange for the Faroe Islands , St. John , St. Thomas or the city of Lichtenau on Greenland . If the curious compensations made to the imperialist-minded Prussia alone made this proposal unrealistic, a division of Alsace-Lorraine between Prussia and Baden would have prevented competition between the other German federal states.

Writings and cards

• Absolutism and federalism or the source of all evil and its cure. Dominicus, Prague 1876.
• Trias map of the Habsburg Monarchy. G. Freytag & Berndt. Vienna around 1909.
• Three cards to complement the Trias card. G. Freytag & Berndt, Vienna around 1910.
• Map of the division of Bohemia into a Kingdom of Bohemia and an Archduchy of Bohemia-Eger. G. Freytag & Berndt, Vienna around 1911.
• New trias map of the Habsburg monarchy with some changes and details of the autonomous crown lands within the three empires. G. Freytag & Berndt, Vienna around 1912.
• Map of a proposal for the future of Alsace-Lorraine, Braunschweig and Northern Schleswig. G. Freytag & Berndt, Vienna around 1913.

literature

• Michel Huberty: L'Allemagne dynastique. Les 15 familles qui ont fait l'empire. Volume 1: Hesse - Reuss - Saxe . Le Perreux-sur-Marne 1976, ISBN 2-901138-01-2 .
• Margret Lemberg, Hans Lemberg : Heinrich von Hanau. A son of the last Elector of Hesse. His life, his political slogan and his future cards. (= Publications of the Historical Commission for Hessen / Kleine Schriften 46.7.) Marburg 2003, ISBN 3-7708-1242-5 .
• Philipp Losch: The Princess of Hanau and her children. In: Hanauer Geschichtsblätter. 13 (1939), p. 36 f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gothaischer Hofkalender. Genealogical paperback of the princely houses. Gotha 1930, p. 358.
2. ↑ genealogy.euweb.cz
3. ↑ The story on the Hořovice website ( memorial from December 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (web archive)
4. ^ Phillip Losch: History of the Electorate of Hesse 1803 to 1866. Marburg 1922, p. 321.
5. ^ Heinrich Prinz von Hanau: Absolutism and federalism or the source of all evil and its cure . Prague 1876. pp. 66, 69 and 81.
6. ^ Heinrich Prinz von Hanau: Absolutism and federalism or the source of all evil and its cure. Prague 1876, p. 32 f.
7. ^ Heinrich Prinz von Hanau: Absolutism and federalism or the source of all evil and its cure. Prague 1876, pp. 6, 16, 22, 47, 52 and 82.
8. ^ Heinrich Prinz von Hanau: Absolutism and federalism or the source of all evil and its cure. Prague 1876, pp. 60 and 65.
9. ^ Margret Lemberg, Hans Lemberg: Heinrich von Hanau. A son of the last Elector of Hesse. His life, his political slogan and his future cards. Marburg 2003, ISBN 3-7708-1242-5 , p. 131 ff.