The year 1618 in Europe was marked by the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, which not only brought about death and destruction at a hitherto unprecedented scale but was also, until recently, believed to mark a major turning point in European history and the history of international diplomacy. The four hundredth anniversary of the war's outbreak in 2018 triggered a considerable number of publications on the subject, mostly by German authors. The book under review, based on a conference held in Vienna in 2018, may be considered the major Austrian contribution to the occasion.
The aim of the book, as explained by the editors, Katrin Keller (Austrian Academy of Sciences) and Martin Scheutz (University of Vienna), is twofold. First, it intends to provide an overview of the war and its consequences from the perspective of the Habsburg monarchy, which, contrary to that of other powers, including the (Habsburg) head of the Holy Roman Empire, up to now has been rather neglected. Second, the selected texts address some of the research deficits listed by the editors.
An overview section consists of four articles on the Austrian (Thomas Winkelbauer) and Bohemian (Petr Mat'a) lands, Hungary (Géza Pálffy), and the Habsburg territories in Swabia and the Upper Rhine area (Dieter Speck). Together, they leave no doubt that each of these polities, even parts of them, were affected by the war in very different ways, according to their proximity to the actual centers of the fighting as well as their political and confessional structure. Mat'a and Pálffy, especially, stress that German, English, and American research tends to underestimate the complexity and importance of the Bohemian and Hungarian lands, leading to misconceptions over the war's interpretation and outcome, which was, in both polities, on the whole a stabilization of Habsburg rule.
The three texts that follow shed light on the Habsburg dynasty, which, as an ideological framework within which its members took their decisions, Arno Strohmeyer argues, should be taken more into account, although his findings are not wholly conclusive. No doubt the dynasty with its two branches (Spanish and Austrian), as well as his role as emperor, on the one hand, and head of the Habsburg monarchy, on the other, plunged Ferdinand III, during the negotiations in Westphalia, into a conflict of interests, as Lena Oetzel details. Horst Carl shows that the Habsburgs, although not known as “heroic” monarchs who directed their troops in person, did indeed actively involve themselves in the waging of war.
Economic and social aspects are at the heart of the next two contributions. Analyzing an exceptional document, a list of debts contracted by the estates of Lower Austria, William D. Godsey highlights the considerable role the Austrian estates played in financing the war, with far-reaching consequences as to their future position in the monarchy. Martin P. Schennach draws attention to the fact that small-scale social unrest caused by the conflicting interests of authorities and the military, on the one hand, and peasants/burghers, on the other, was a common phenomenon in Austria (not only) in times of war, even apart from the well-known “peasants’ wars” in Upper and Inner Austria.
In accordance with one of the more recent developments in historiography on the Thirty Years’ War, the volume presents several self-narratives of very different kinds: a chronicle written by the Catholic craftsman and burgher of the Upper Austrian town Steyr Jakob Zetl (Martin Scheutz); the cardinal Ernst Adalbert von Harrach's diary as well as his “Tagzettel,” a form of news digest concocted for family and friends/acquaintances (Katrin Keller); the extraordinarily extensive diary of the Protestant duke Christian II von Anhalt-Bernburg (Alexander Zirr); as well as short autobiographical texts by three Habsburg court officials who had occupied different military ranks during the war, written either as a reminder to themselves, as a contribution to family history, or, simply, to petition for a pension (Harald Tersch). Of note in the media market of the time were the so-called Messrelationen, news collections sold at the fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig, the contents of which, as Esther-Beate Körber points out, the Habsburgs could not really control.
More details on the reality of war in small communities/regions are provided by Alois Niederstetter (Vorarlberg) and Arthur Stögmann (Lower Austria). Events and facts, however, were at best loosely connected with what found its way into local commemorative culture, alive until today. Aspects of contemporary as well as nineteenth-century reflections of the Thirty Years’ War in the arts are presented (and illustrated) by art historians Friedrich Polleroß (officers’ portraits) and Werner Telesko (historical painting). The final article (Christoph Kampmann) falls a little outside the boundaries of the book insofar as it is not committed to the Austrian point of view; it not only challenges the interpretation of the Peace of Westphalia as the origin of the so-called Westphalian system in international diplomacy but also explains how this misconception came into being.
Die Habsburgermonarchie und der Dreißigjährige Krieg is not one of those increasingly popular academic textbooks that offer quick, easily digestible information, often at the risk of oversimplification. Instead, it draws a vivid and extensively documented picture of mostly state-of-the-art historiographic analysis in a complex field for all who prefer a differentiated view of events, emerging from the use of manifold thematic, conceptual, and methodological approaches.
