Leopold Berchtold

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Leopold Graf Berchtold (full name Graf Leopold Anton Johann Sigismund Josef Korsinus Ferdinand Berchtold von und zu Ungarschitz , Fratting , and Pullitz ; Hungarian Gróf Berchtold Lipót ; born April 18, 1863 in Vienna , † November 21, 1942 in Peresznye , Eisenburg county ) was an Austro-Hungarian politicians and played an important role in the July crisis leading to the First world war led.

Leopold Graf Berchtold

Life

Buchlau Castle
Berchtold with his wife and sons at Buchlau Castle (1906)

The family of Count Berchtold originally came from Tyrol and owned extensive estates in Moravia . Leopold was the son of Count Sigmund von Berchtold (1834-1900) and his wife, nee Countess Trauttmansdorff . He grew up at Buchlau Castle in Moravia. There he also learned the Czech , Slovak and Hungarian languages .

After taking the state examination, he entered the civil service at the Lieutenancy in Brno in 1887 . In 1894 Berchtold passed the diplomatic examination and was assigned to the Paris embassy as legation secretary . He married Countess Ferdinandine Károlyi , heiress of large estates in today's Slovakia , and had three sons with her, two of whom died as children. In 1897 he went to the embassy in London as the first secretary and in 1903 as counselor to Saint Petersburg , where he experienced the Russian defeat in the war against Japan .

Berchtold was the Austrian ambassador to Saint Petersburg from December 1906 to 1911 . In 1908 he initiated a meeting between Foreign Minister Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal and the Russian Foreign Minister Iswolski in his Buchlau Castle. On September 16, 1908, the two kingdoms agreed here in advance of the Bosnian annexation crisis the Agreement Buchlau , after the Austro-Hungarian Empire Bosnia-Herzegovina received and Russia free passage through the Dardanelles should win.

On February 17, 1912, Berchtold was appointed Minister of the Imperial and Royal Houses and Foreign Affairs by the Emperor and King and thus chairman of the joint Council of Ministers. He took office after the policies of his predecessor Aehrenthal brought Austria into international isolation and, above all, worsened relations with Russia.

Berchtold continued on this course. He was a representative of an anti-Serbian policy and therefore initiated - in order to keep Serbia away from the Mediterranean - the establishment of Albania . After the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 ( assassination attempt in Sarajevo ), he formulated and represented the ultimatum to Serbia on July 23, 1914 , the rejection of which ultimately ushered in the First World War .

After his resignation as Foreign Minister on January 13, 1915, on which Franz Joseph I awarded him the diamonds for the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Stephen , Berchtold became advisor to the heir to the throne and later Emperor and King Karl I , whom he was from May to November 1918 served as the (last) chief steward.

At the beginning of November 1918, he accompanied a transport of Habsburg jewels from the treasury in the Vienna Hofburg to Switzerland in order to enable Charles I. to dispose of them further. Berchtold then stayed in Switzerland, but since 1923 he lived in a secluded place, mainly in Hungary . Berchtold died in 1942 on his estate in Peresznye near Güns , Hungary , near the Austrian (then imperial German) border.

Political crises

Balkan Wars 1912/1913

During the First Balkan War (in October 1912) Berchtold sought, in addition to minimal border adjustments, a close economic connection between Serbia and the monarchy. The Foreign Minister rejected Serbian access to the Adriatic . Therefore he created an autonomous Albania and wanted to secure the economic interests of the monarchy in the Balkans by building a railway to Saloniki , which was converted into a free port . His customs union plans with Serbia and Montenegro pursued the purpose of politically eliminating these states through economic affiliation.

As early as the Bosnian annexation crisis , but even more so during the Balkan wars, plans emerged to solve the South Slav question by annexing Serbia. Berchtold was already at the Joint Council of Ministers on 2 May 1913, at the Skadar -Crisis, for the annexation of Serbia as an equal part of the monarchy.

Berchtold revealed the political program of the monarchy after the Balkan Wars in a memorandum dated July 1, 1914 that was drafted before the assassination attempt in Sarajevo :

“The balance of the Balkan states, which was disturbed by the expansion of Serbia and the hegemonic position of Romania, and the deeply sunk influence of Austria-Hungary were to be restored by a new political offensive and thus the dangerous activities of the Greater Serbian and Greater Romanian irredenta , which had received such a powerful impetus, should be repressed become."

July crisis 1914

Philip Alexius de László : Count Leopold Berchtold , oil on canvas, 1906

After the assassination attempt in Sarajevo, the previously negative Berchtold took over the leadership of the war party himself . Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf wanted to start the attack on Serbia immediately after the news of the assassination attempt, but Berchtold and Emperor Franz Joseph considered an investigation and diplomatic preparation necessary. At the Council of Ministers for Common Affairs on July 7, 1914, Berchtold called for “Serbia to be rendered harmless forever by an expression of force”.

It was Berchtold's tactic in the July crisis to pretend that there was no interest in the annexation of Serbia. Austro-Hungarian diplomats in Saint Petersburg and London repeatedly emphasized that the monarchy had no intention of conquering Serbia. Berchtold let the Russian Foreign Minister Sasonow know:

“That in our action against Serbia we do not intend to acquire any territorial territories and do not want to destroy the independent existence of the kingdom at all. […] The monarchy is territorially saturated and has no desire for Serbian property. If the struggle with Serbia is forced upon us, it will not be a struggle for territorial gain for us, but merely a means of self-defense and self-preservation. "

On July 29th, however, this message was avoided: a government could not foresee if it was told in London what it would do after a victorious war. It is natural, however, that "all declarations relating to our disinterest only apply in the event that the war between us and Serbia remains localized".

The decision-makers were very well aware of the danger posed by Russian intervention, but they could no longer and apparently no longer wanted to suppress the urgent desire to strike against Serbia. Berchtold wrote during the July crisis on July 25th:

“At the moment when we decided to take serious action against Serbia, we were of course aware of the possibility of a clash with Russia arising from the Serbian difference. […] However, we could not let this eventuality confuse us in our position on Serbia, because fundamental state-political considerations put us before the need to put an end to the situation so that a Russian license would enable Serbia to threaten the monarchy with continuous and unpunished. "

The responsibility for these fatal decisions in Austria-Hungary lay with Emperor and King Franz Joseph and his advisers: Berchtold, the two Prime Ministers Karl Stürgkh and Stephan Tisza, and Chief of Staff Conrad. The Austrian parliament was adjourned in March 1914 by the Kaiser and Stürgkh and was not asked.

Italian demands

Berchtold deliberately failed to inform the (officially) allies Italy and Romania of the intended action against Serbia, as he foresaw that they would only give their consent in return for compensation.

The Italian ambassador in Vienna told Berchtold on December 19, 1914 that Italy would demand compensation even in the event of "partial, permanent or temporary ... territorial occupation", but also if the monarchy would obtain "advantages of a non-territorial nature, even merely political influence or economic privileges" . Urged by the ambassadors in Rome , Bernhard von Bülow and Karl Macchio , Berchtold gave in and, on January 9, 1915, proposed to Franz Joseph that the Trentino be ceded. The emperor and the Hungarian Prime Minister Stephan Tisza wanted nothing to do with it. At the instigation of the mighty Tisza, Berchtold was replaced as Foreign Minister by the Hungarian Stephan Burián on January 13, 1915 .

Personality and Varia

Berchtold spent the last years of his life on his estate in Peresznye

Contemporaries portrayed Berchtold as a lovable, sensitive, tactful and educated grand master, modest, self-deprecating but also insecure and unworldly. Hunting, equestrian sport, women and friends were often in the foreground, but he stayed away from political reality. A real discussion of the needs and ideas of the peoples of the empire was not possible for him.

During his time as Karl's chief steward, the emperor had received the new minister Josef Redlich in a private audience and said to him: “... he would never have declared war; but he was only a minor officer at the time… ”The“ probably chiefly responsible person ”- Berchtold - was meanwhile standing in the anteroom as chief chamberlain, comments Anton Mayr-Hartig.

literature

Web links

Commons : Leopold Berchtold  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hugo Hantsch : Leopold Graf Berchtold. Grand master and statesman. Verlag Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1963. Volume 1: pp. 1 and 8ff.
  2. ^ Hugo Hantsch: Leopold Graf Berchtold. Grand master and statesman . Verlag Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1963. Volume 1: pp. 11 and 15 and 23 and 30ff.
  3. ^ Berchtold Leopold Graf. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1957, p. 71.
  4. ↑ Pink drops . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1966, pp. 108 f . ( online ).
  5. ^ Dörte Löding: Germany's and Austria-Hungary's Balkan Policy from 1912–1914 with special consideration of their economic interests. Hamburg 1969, pp. 38-41.
  6. ↑ Ludwig Bittner , Hans Uebersberger (ed.): Austria-Hungary's foreign policy from the Bosnian crisis in 1908 to the outbreak of war in 1914. Diplomatic files from the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Vienna / Leipzig 1930, Volume 6: p. 324ff. (No. 6870) and Volume 7: p. 397ff. (No. 8779).
  7. ^ Hugo Hantsch: Leopold Graf Berchtold. Grand master and statesman. Verlag Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1963. Volume 1: p. 549.
  8. ↑ William Jannen, Jr: The Austro-Hungarian Decision For War in July 1914 . In: Samuel R. Williamson, Jr, Peter Pastor (Eds.): Essays On World War I: Origins and Prisoners of War . New York 1983, pp. 55-81, here: p. 72; and József Galántai: István Tisza and the First World War . In: Austria in History and Literature 8 (1964). Pp. 465–477, here: 477.
  9. ↑ Miklós Komjáthy (Ed.): Protocols of the Joint Council of Ministers of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1914–1918). Budapest 1966, p. 104f.
  10. ↑ Imanuel Geiss (ed.): July crisis and outbreak of war. A collection of documents . Hanover 1963/64, Volume 2: p. 345ff. and 408 and 448f.
  11. ↑ Ludwig Bittner, Hans Uebersberger (ed.): Austria-Hungary's foreign policy from the Bosnian crisis in 1908 to the outbreak of war in 1914. Diplomatic files from the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs . Vienna / Leipzig 1930, Volume 8: p. 721 (No. 10685).
  12. ^ Hugo Hantsch: Leopold Graf Berchtold. Grand master and statesman . Verlag Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1963, Volume 1: p. 567.
  13. ^ Hugo Hantsch: Leopold Graf Berchtold. Grand master and statesman. Verlag Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1963. Volume 2: p. 696.
  14. ^ Hugo Hantsch: Leopold Graf Berchtold. Grand master and statesman . Verlag Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1963. Volume 2: pp. 705-717; and Leo Valiani: Negotiations between Italy and Austria-Hungary 1914–1915. In: Wolfgang Schieder (Ed.): First World War. Causes, origins and aims of the war . Cologne / Berlin 1969. pp. 317-346, here: pp. 326f.
  15. ^ Johann Albrecht Freiherr von Reiswitz:  Berchtold, Leopold Graf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 65 ( digitized version ).
  16. ^ Fritz Fellner (Ed.): Fateful Years of Austria 1908-1919. Josef Redlich's political diary. Verlag Böhlau, Graz / Cologne 1954, Volume 2: p. 309; and Anton Mayr-Harting: The Downfall. Austria-Hungary 1848–1922 . Amalthea-Verlag, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-85002-257-9 , p. 888.
predecessor Office successor
Alois Lexa von Ährenthal Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister
Feb. 17, 1912 - Jan 13. 1915 		Stephan Burián
personal data
SURNAME Berchtold, Leopold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berchtold, Count Leopold von; Berchtold from and to Ungarschitz Frättling and Püllütz, Count Leopold Anton Johann Sigismund Josef Korsinus Ferdinand; Berchtold, Gróf Lipót (Hungarian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister at the start of the First World War
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1942
Place of death Peresznye