Aristocrats and Politics in Austria, 1898–1899: Some Letters of Count Alois Lexa Von Aehrenthal and Prince Karl Schwarzenberg1

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

E-ISSN: 1558-5255|19|1|155-187

ISSN: 0067-2378

Source: Austrian History Yearbook, Vol.19, Iss.1, 1983-01, pp. : 155-187

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Abstract

The private letters of statesmen, diplomats and generals, as historians know, often are more valuable than voluminous official documents because they reveal more of the personalities and attitudes of the writers and illuminate more of the surrounding sociopolitical context in which they acted. With that in mind, the purpose of publishing the appended letters is two-fold. First, they offer new sources of information on Austro-Hungarian internal politics in the period 1867–1918, particularly the convulsive Czech-German language conflict of 1897–1899. Second, they serve to introduce historians to the private correspondence of Baron (after 1909, Count) Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal, Austro-Hungarian foreign minister from 1906 until 1912.