Assassination/Archduke by King and Woolmans

[TimM]

Sorry to take this off topic again, but I must address something Petr said:

basically sold down the river at Yalta and Potsdam

Many in Eastern Europe view Yalta as a betrayal, a decision that led to decades of Communist oppression (1940's to the 1980's).  Yalta, they claim, "let the Russians in."

However, the Russians were not let in, they were already there.  They kicked Germany out and moved in themselves.  The only way for the West to have gotten the Russians out of EE would be to use military force (many, such as General Patton, actually pushed for this).  However, after six years of war, no one wanted another.  I suppose the U.S. could have used atomic bombs and turned Moscow into a radioactive crater and threatened to do the same to Leningrad (as it was then called) if Russia didn't leave EE, but that would have been going to horrible extremes. 

Now what happened to Eastern Europe after WWII was a tragedy, but aside from launching a new war, there was nothing that could have been done.

[historyfan]

I just finished this fantastic book.

My knowledge of the Habsburgs is very limited - pretty much to how the assassination related to the start of WWI (and even then, not very accurate!) This is a great book to broaden the knowledge of the Austro-Hungarian imperial family and the politics that surrounded them.

The list of "errors"/oversights/blatant ignorance surrounding the Sarajevo trip and its security measures is astounding. At the risk of bringing up the "conspiracy theory" angle, could one man (Potiorek, the governor-general) have been so colossally stupid so many consecutive times??

[Greenowl]

Thanks Greg!

It is only a small point but I was curious in view of what I thought was a coincidence with regard to the name. Nevertheless, I am relieved to know that you also came across references to Urban, so it was not just poor research/lack of information on my part. Oddly enough, in much of the literature the driver's name is not mentioned at all. With Leopold Loyka I really have learnt something new!! I only have about two chapters left now, so will be really sorry when I come to the end.

Cheers,
MONIKA

I have since found the following information about Loyka (sometimes written as "Lojka"): On the trip to Sarajevo the Archduke was accompanied by Count Franz Harrach of the illustrious Austro-Bohemian noble family. One of the family's main seats was Velke Meziříčí, where during military exercises in 1909 Count Harrach recruited Leopold Loyka after he had risked life and limb restraining some startled horses. In the Count's employ, Loyka became a chauffeur of motorized horsepower and in particular the Graf und Stift limousine in which he drove the Archduke and his wife in Sarajevo. Leopold Loyka was haunted by his mistake (the fateful wrong turn) for the rest of the life, although it is also reported that he proudly showed off mementos such as the Archduke's bloodstained braces and a piece from Sophie's gold bracelet. Loyka's marriage ended in divorce and he amassed huge debts at the pub he ran in the city of Brno. He died at the age of 41 in 1926.

[Janet Ashton]

I have since found the following information about Loyka (sometimes written as "Lojka"): On the trip to Sarajevo the Archduke was accompanied by Count Franz Harrach of the illustrious Austro-Bohemian noble family. One of the family's main seats was Velke Meziříčí, where during military exercises in 1909 Count Harrach recruited Leopold Loyka after he had risked life and limb restraining some startled horses. In the Count's employ, Loyka became a chauffeur of motorized horsepower and in particular the Graf und Stift limousine in which he drove the Archduke and his wife in Sarajevo. Leopold Loyka was haunted by his mistake (the fateful wrong turn) for the rest of the life, although it is also reported that he proudly showed off mementos such as the Archduke's bloodstained braces and a piece from Sophie's gold bracelet. Loyka's marriage ended in divorce and he amassed huge debts at the pub he ran in the city of Brno. He died at the age of 41 in 1926.

A memorial plaque to Leopold Loyka will apparently be unveiled in the cemetery in Brno in which he is buried this weekend.

[Превед]

I received "The Assassination of the Archduke" as a paperback yesterday and started reading it immediately. Having read and browsed all of it, I must report that I'm somewhat disappointed by this book, which I had looked immensely forward to because of this thread. Primarily the fault is my own, as I had gotten the impression, evidently a misconception, from the discussion in this thread, that the book dealt in detail with the family's relationship with Bohemia as their "homeland", since the book describes how they felt Konopischt was their true home. Instead it focuses on and only slightly elaborates or corrects the well-known facts about the couple, their assassination and their children, so that it feels in many ways as just a popularized English-language version of Wladimir Aichelburg's German-language biographies of FF.

Tellingly the book has interesting information about FF and Sophie's good relations with King George V and Queen Mary of the UK, but next to no information about their relationship with their Czech subjects, which after all holds the key as to why the Hohenberg children were exiled and deprived of their inheritance. Great comedic entertainment value lies in the book's tale of Senior Court Chamberlain Montenuovo's many petty and insulting intrigues against FF's morganatic spouse. One can actually well understand how Sophie kept calm about this, because it was too ridiculous to take seriously. Elevating herself above petty accusations of "debasing the All-Highest Arch-House" must have been even easier when she considered the scandalous and downright shocking behaviour of many (male) Habsburgs and all the other mental and behavioral problems in the family that stemmed from forced marriages and inbreeding.

Really "debasing" was the anecdote where it was revealed how FF and his cousin Elisabeth (Princess of Windisch-Graetz) quarreled about their alloted seaside holiday time at Miramar castle in Trieste, like it was a family timeshare flat!

[TimM]

Sadly, unlike the Romanovs, much of the correspondence between FF and Sophie have been lost. 

[Maria Sisi]

How did they become lost?

If I had to guess it was during WWII with the Reds but I don't know

[Rodney_G.]

That's a possibility, though it could have occurred earlier, with the turmoil of World War One or the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of it.

[Превед]

How did they become lost?

If I had to guess it was during WWII with the Reds but I don't know

No, it was their son Max who "tidied up" the archives in the 1920s and burnt nearly all of his parents' intimate correspondence. The Communists did not harm Artstetten, as the Hohenbergs were heroes to them, due to their anti-Nazi stance and time in concentration camps. Max was made a major in the Red Army and mayor of Artstetten by the Soviets, according to "The Assassination of the Archduke".

[Превед]

"this did not stop Masaryk's wife and daughter (it does not state which one) from descending on the castle to pilfer its contents. Sophie's furs vanished into Charlotte Masaryk's hands, while her daughter took a finely tooled saddle from the stables that had been the Archduke and the Duchess's last present to Sophie".

Quite ironic, considering that President Msaryk's father had been a groom / coachman, allegedly on "imperial estates" around the family's home in Čejkovice / Czeikowitz in Moravia. Does anyone know which estates? (The manor in Čejkovice was owned by a prominent Jew called Nathan Redlich, who was rumoured to be Masaryk's biological father, in light of the excellent education provided to the peasant son Tomáš Masaryk. Shades of the rumours concerning Hitler's past!)

I wonder if the Hohenbergs knew enough Czech to make a black joke about the "vultures'" last name originally being Masařík and meaning Aasfliege (carcass fly) in German (common flesh fly in English)!

Speaking of grooms and stables, where was the estate village at Konopischt that FF relocated? At the modern car park, restaurants and ticket booth on the north side or somewhere else?

[Janet Ashton]

"this did not stop Masaryk's wife and daughter (it does not state which one) from descending on the castle to pilfer its contents. Sophie's furs vanished into Charlotte Masaryk's hands, while her daughter took a finely tooled saddle from the stables that had been the Archduke and the Duchess's last present to Sophie".

Quite ironic, considering that President Msaryk's father had been a groom / coachman, allegedly on "imperial estates" around the family's home in Čejkovice / Czeikowitz in Moravia. Does anyone know which estates? (The manor in Čejkovice was owned by a prominent Jew called Nathan Redlich, who was rumoured to be Masaryk's biological father, in light of the excellent education provided to the peasant son Tomáš Masaryk. Shades of the rumours concerning Hitler's past!)

I wonder if the Hohenbergs knew enough Czech to make a black joke about the "vultures'" last name originally being Masařík and meaning Aasfliege (carcass fly) in German (common flesh fly in English)!

The "imperial" estate his father worked on would presumably be Hodonin (Goeding)?, which is also the name the name of the village where Masaryk grew up. I believe Hodonin belonged to Franz I, but I don't know if any later Habsburgs actually lived there or used it.

The story of Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk descending on Konopiste to take away furs is at best highly implausible, considering that she was in an asylum at Veleslavin between autumn 1918 and May or July 1919, following the total collapse of her physical and emotional health. She never fully recovered, and appeared in public on very few occasions between then and her death - their daughter Alice replaced her in the role of Masarayk's hostess and "first lady". The furs story (if you also read the version Lucien Meysels gives in his book on the Hohenbergs) was told by a servant to Sophie (Franz Ferdinand's daughter) who passed it on to her great-niece, and who knows what sort of Chinese whispers occurred along the way. I don't know what names the Hohenbergs may have concocted for the Masaryk family, but it's interesting to note a certain re-imagining of him as some sort of crude nationalist with vulgar relatives, casting the Habsburg dynasty and their relatives as representatives of a kind of lost cosmopolitanism.  In reality, the Habsburg successor states were very like smaller versions of the Habsburg state, with many of the same problems.

[Janet Ashton]

next to no information about their relationship with their Czech subjects

Robert A. Kann, te great Anglo-Austrian historian of the late Habsburg days, wrote quite a bit about Franz Ferdinand and Bohemia in his Erzherzog-Franz-Ferdinand-Studien - and this essay is also available in English in his book "Dynasty, Politics and Culture." The focus is almost exclusively on politics, however, and I think there are some fascinating cultural aspects to this question. Kann concludes that FF had no particular prejudice in favour of Bohemia, despite the fact that he was (and is) sometimes sentimentally regarded there as a friend to the Czechs, and pro-Slav. There is probably a lot to be written about the cultural portrayals of him - e.g. I notice that some stories about FF at Konopiste paint him in a kind of Wenceslas light. He also pops up in local history sites now - in North Bohemia on the former Kinsky estates there are canals named for him and legends of his courting Sophie there. Aside from "Cesar Ferdinand", who lived in Bohemia after 1848, he gets more attention than any Habsburgs, I feel.

I also think there are two aspects to the fate of Konopiste - one will indeed relate to the way he acted as lord-of-manor there (and tales of his often heavy-handed behaviour in protecting his property are also repeated of his Austrian properties by quite different sources), but the other is simply the result of the country becoming independent and wanting to forge a future that was free of the Habsburgs. One interesting thing I found out recently while researching articles on aspects of World War One is that the children of Franz Ferdinand were greatly used in propaganda during the war, as innocents who must be avenged, as a symbol of the future, and as a national rallying point for all Habsburg subjects. So the consequences of that in terms of the way people felt by the end of the war are something to ponder, I feel.

[Превед]

The "imperial" estate his father worked on would presumably be Hodonin (Goeding)?, which is also the name the name of the village where Masaryk grew up. I believe Hodonin belonged to Franz I, but I don't know if any later Habsburgs actually lived there or used it.

Yes, this must be it, although Hodonín / Göding itself is a town, but with a surrounding estate (and castle, which today is a Masaryk museum), which seems to have been in Habsburg possession since the 18th century.

The story of Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk descending on Konopiste to take away furs is at best highly implausible, considering that she was in an asylum at Veleslavin between autumn 1918 and May or July 1919, following the total collapse of her physical and emotional health. She never fully recovered, and appeared in public on very few occasions between then and her death - their daughter Alice replaced her in the role of Masarayk's hostess and "first lady". The furs story (if you also read the version Lucien Meysels gives in his book on the Hohenbergs) was told by a servant to Sophie (Franz Ferdinand's daughter) who passed it on to her great-niece, and who knows what sort of Chinese whispers occurred along the way.

Wow. As I haven't read Meysels myself, that is indeed very interesting information. So basically it's possible that the servant stole the furs and blamed it on the Masaryks!

Robert A. Kann, te great Anglo-Austrian historian of the late Habsburg days, wrote quite a bit about Franz Ferdinand and Bohemia in his Erzherzog-Franz-Ferdinand-Studien - and this essay is also available in English in his book "Dynasty, Politics and Culture." The focus is almost exclusively on politics, however, and I think there are some fascinating cultural aspects to this question. Kann concludes that FF had no particular prejudice in favour of Bohemia, despite the fact that he was (and is) sometimes sentimentally regarded there as a friend to the Czechs, and pro-Slav. There is probably a lot to be written about the cultural portrayals of him - e.g. I notice that some stories about FF at Konopiste paint him in a kind of Wenceslas light. He also pops up in local history sites now - in North Bohemia on the former Kinsky estates there are canals named for him and legends of his courting Sophie there. Aside from "Cesar Ferdinand", who lived in Bohemia after 1848, he gets more attention than any Habsburgs, I feel.

Interesting, I will research the issue further, in either English or German.

I also think there are two aspects to the fate of Konopiste - one will indeed relate to the way he acted as lord-of-manor there

What really strikes you when you go to Konopischt and / or look at the map, is how close it is to Benešov, which really is a quite sizeable small town. It must have lived in some kind of symbiosis with Konopischt with its many illustrious visitors arriving at the town's railway station. E. g. I can easily imagine the Hohenberg children being taken into town on a shopping trip as a treat etc.

One interesting thing I found out recently while researching articles on aspects of World War One is that the children of Franz Ferdinand were greatly used in propaganda during the war, as innocents who must be avenged, as a symbol of the future, and as a national rallying point for all Habsburg subjects. So the consequences of that in terms of the way people felt by the end of the war are something to ponder, I feel.

Aha, another bit in the great puzzle, interesting!