Product Description

For more than six centuries, the strange and defiant Habsburg family ruled a polyglot empire sprawling from Audstria to the Adriatic Sea, from North Africa to Mexico. Researcher Andrew Wheatcroft shows how the dynasty's mystical vision and unsurpassed political acumen culminated in the culture that produced 20th-century giants such as Freud and Hitler. 16 pages of photographs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148739 in Books
• Published on: 1997-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Customer Reviews

AEIOU and All That
Since the Habsburgs ruled much of Europe for over 700 years, writing their history is a risky business indeed. Happily, Wheatcroft avoids the trap of getting bogged down in a plethora of dates and deaths. His solution - and the reader soon realizes the briliance of his design - is instead to focus on what it meant to be a Habsburg, and on the metaphysical identity they assumed. The Habsburgs projected themselves as possessing a special mission from God above to preserve the Catholic faith and to maintain the common weal through a perpetual, hereditary monarchy. Their various inventions - the Order of the Golden Fleece, the motto "AEIOU," their patented system of interlocking dynastic marriages - were all part of this corporate strategy. The sense of quest sustained the family throughout the Holy Roman Empire and guided leaders such as Maximilian, Phillip of Spain, Maria Theresa, and Franz-Joseph. This book is also a terrific meditation on collective memory: while most of Gemany had forgotten that a Hapsburg had once been Emperor (Rudolf 1271-1291), NO-ONE in the Habsburg dynasty lost sight of the prize. Such was the family's preparedness that upon the re-election of one of its members (Albert, 1438-51), the Habsburgs held the Imperial throne until 1918. The Kennedys, the Bushes and even the Windsors are a mere blip by comparison.

Interesting theory though hardly unique.
Many positive things have been said about this book (mostly valid) so I'll just jump to three sticking points which potential readers should keep in mind before buying it.

1.This book asserts that the Habsburgs consciously created and manipulated their own families mythology to a degree unseen in Europe. This is greatly misleading for it forgets (unbelievably) the other great mythology making machines around at the time (the Medici's in Florence, the Bourbons in France and so on).
2.Though the Habsburgs did manipulate their image via various means it cannot be stated with the certainty with which Wheatcroft does that it was a conscious family project from the days of Rudolf I (1218-1291). Certainly it preoccupied his later descendents but Rudoplf and his immediate progeny were simply behaving in a pattern familiar to most rulers of the time.
3. I must also stress that the book is not an easy read, mostly due to the fact that the author jumps around the historic timeline and throws in a few dozen Hapsburg names (some with no numbers attached which can be really confusing seeing as the Habsburgs shared names profusely) to confuse things even more. I also disliked the references made to figures of whom we know nothing about and who the author says nothing about.
Oh and this is not a history of the rulers themselves but rather a book on how the Habsburgs manipulated their image down the centuries. Do not buy it if you want to find out about individual rulers achievements, acts etc. Very little of that can be found in this book.

Interesting ideas, but execution could have been better
This book is not a history of Austria-as the title indicates, it is a history of the Habsburgs, the hereditary rulers of Austria. As I mentioned in my review of Brook-Shepherd's book, "The Austrians" (a book that is complementary to this one, with relatively little overlap), there really isn't a great deal of material available in English on Austrian history-at least not on events taking place before the latter half of the 19th century.

From the traditional historical point of view-that in which history is the chronology recounting of war and changes in power-nothing of significance really happened in Austria that wasn't somehow associated with the Habsburgs. Whether or not this is the case is the subject of a different book-the subject of this one is the Habsburg family itself. Although their presence lasted longer in Austria than anywhere else, this powerful family also ruled the Netherlands, and Spain, and often provided the figurehead for the Holy Roman Empire.

Probably to an extent greater than any other royal house, the Habsburgs had their greatest successes not on the battlefield, but in the bedroom. They married their way to what at one point was the largest empire in the world, encompassing not only the majority of the German-speaking lands, but also the Lowlands, the Iberian peninsula, and the Spanish territories in North and South America, and Asia. Quite a feat for a dynasty that had been chased out of their hereditary home and namesake 300 years earlier by pitchfork-wielding Swiss peasants. The Habsburg story is more concerned with the issues of power than it is with warfare, which often went quite badly for them.

Given a unique and interesting subject, the author takes a somewhat non-traditional approach. As he explains in the preface "More and more I found that the Habsburgs expressed their sense of missions and their objectives obliquely, through a kind of code." Wheatcroft attempts to show how the Habsburgs manipulated symbolism and other communication mechanisms to further their goals and to set themselves apart as the unquestionable lords of Central Europe. I think the author is only partially successful in this, although I found nothing in his approach that seemed unreasonable. Several of the author's explanations have been useful to me in interpreting symbolism that can still be seen today in Austria, such as the designation "K.K" and the gilded presence of the Order of the Golden Fleece on statues and paintings (This was a chivalric order borrowed from the Burgundians when they didn't need it any longer giving the Habsburgs an opportunity to run their own good ole boys club.)

On the negative side, I found the book difficult to read. While the subject matter certainly lends itself to confusion, dealing with an inbred family that unimaginatively reused the same names over and over again, sometimes with different numbers in different contexts for the same ruler, perhaps the author could have used a more straightforward outline. The book tends to spiral a bit, mixing up events taking place at different times in order to make a point about continuity and a repeating pattern of Habsburg behavior. I finally dog-eared the family trees appearing in the Appendix so that I could flip back to them in an attempt to keep all the cousins, nieces, and nephews straight.

This is not a traditional history. While I don't feel that the author necessarily builds totally plausible case for his conception of the Habsburgs as being Europe's premier power of propaganda, I do think that he offers genuine and useful insight. I question the execution more than the concept, which I think has some validity.