An imperial bureaucrat, landowner, industrialist, engineer, inventor, playwright, and poet, Wolfgang von Kempelen was a fascinating figure in eighteenth-century Austria. Although an extraordinary “Renaissance man” of his times, Kempelen was, at the same time, conventional and ordinary. His superiors, including Maria Theresa herself, appreciated and rewarded his dedication, loyalty, and his bureaucratic and technical expertise.

Alice Reininger does justice to the manifold activities of Wolfgang von Kempelen. Her book is the result of prodigious research in the archives and in secondary literature. The author's aim was to dispel legends and rumors that eventually came to surround her subject, to set the record straight, and to place Kempelen's life and activities on an “objective foundation” (6). Inasmuch as such a goal can possibly be reached, Reininger succeeds admirably.

The book, however, suffers from several problems that are nevertheless correctable. One is a common one, afflicting mostly authors of dissertations, who think that they absolutely must write down every little detail that relates to their subject. This effort points to a lack of necessary selectivity on the author's part and results in literally inundating the reader with endless minutiae. For instance, Karl Gottlob von Windisch's eulogy over Kempelen's father is a characteristic piece of speech from the period, but to quote it in full is overkill. The same is true of letters that are also quoted in full and about detailed descriptions of various minor transactions Kempelen had engaged in. Abbreviating the text in a second edition or in a translation should be done in my opinion.

The second problem is structural. At times, the author does not pay sufficient attention to chronology. For example, Kempelen's involvement in the settlement policy of the Banat preceded much of his activity as a bureaucrat and an industrialist; yet in the book, discussion of the second comes before the first. The text would have been greatly improved by eliminating some of these details.

The best part of the book describes what in fact made Kempelen famous, his various engineering feats and inventions, that ranged from building water pipes for the Schönbrunn Palace to steam engines, the building of the coronation-hill in Pozsony, a bed for Maria Theresa, canals in various parts of the monarchy, printing presses, a tobacco-cutting machine, and most famously, his speech-machine that, as the author perceptively states, was a forerunner of a cryptograph device (326). In the author's well-founded judgment, Kempelen's other famous invention, a chess-playing machine, was pure fantasy, propagated by rumors in his own time and later that lacked any serious validity (382).

The author should also be commended for giving the reader an impression about what life was like for an upper-echelon Habsburg bureaucrat, although I wish she would have made more use of Waltraud Heindl's outstanding work, Gehorsame Rebellen. Bürokratie und Beamte in Österreich 1780 bis 1848 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1991). I found astonishing the latitude given to Kempelen by his superiors, who allowed him to get involved in activities that had nothing to do with his official duties. The author does not romanticize Habsburg bureaucracy, making references to the material deprivations of those among them—under Joseph II—who did not come from a wealthy background (52–53). She also mentions one rivalry between the powerful chairman of the Hungarian Hofkammer, Antal Grassalkovich, and Kempelen. Grassalkovich engineered the closing down of the textile factory at Apatin, managed by Kempelen, because it competed with a factory he had sponsored in Hatvan (116). Still, at its best, this bureaucracy was reliably competent. In the author's well-documented opinion, Kempelen, as the head of the monarchy's salt monopoly between 1765 and 1798 (which secured a significant income for the state), had done exceedingly well, making his office a “model for Europe,” not only by handling matters of finances, transport, and technical problems well, but also by raising the living standards of the poorest employees (63–64).

My final objections have to do with occasional errors of historical fact. Certainly, Maria Theresa did promote industrial development; however, to claim that such development was tied to the evolution of a modern state and its efforts to integrate the industrial proletariat into society is to project the industrial revolution back into the eighteenth century (32). The author herself contradicts this assumption by emphasizing the importance that the aristocracy attached to maintaining its commanding position in economic development (33). Nor was it true that such development was especially strongly promoted by Vienna as far as Hungary was concerned because of that country's relative backwardness (91). Political considerations—the Hungarian nobility's unwillingness to share the tax burden—played a negative role as it provoked a tariff policy by Vienna that was seen as markedly disadvantageous to Hungary. Although the old accusation of brutal colonization of Hungary by Austria has been disproven, promotion of industrial development in Hungary followed an inconsistent zigzag course.

Alice Reininger has written a valuable book that can be further improved. Such improvements would make the book more accessible not only to specialists, but to an interested public as well.