Introduction
Almost every national historiography has at one time or another emphasized a certain era dominated by the alleged extraordinary feats of particular individuals. Modern nationalists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often sought support for their founding myths in their histories, exploiting imagery of heroic eras and their heroes for the needs of the present. The work of historians played an integral part of this mythmaking process. The German word Heldenzeitalter [Age of Heroes] is a concept with exactly such strong historiographical dimension. The term is not precise. It has variously been used to denote the mythic era of German sagas, the time of the Völkerwanderungen [migrations of peoples], and the Ostrogoth king Theodoric (sixth century). The same concept of an “age of heroes” is also fundamental to understanding Austrian historiography. This age constitutes a basic element of the Austrian national idea, and as with the other applications of the term “Age of Heroes,” the Austrian version, which was largely a nineteenth-century historiographical construct, was also fed by epics and poetry and myth making. The ruling Habsburg dynasty also actively supported the design of an Austrian Age of Heroes, at whose center could be found the figure of Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736).
The Habsburg monarchy in the seventeenth century found itself fighting enemies both in the east (the Ottoman Empire) and in the west (France). The outcome of these conflicts in both east and west, according to historical memory, was determined by the “great men” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, men who shaped the internal and external policies of the monarchy. Due to this notion, Austrian historiography can hardly avoid calling the time from 1670 to 1740 an “age of heroes.” The role of this so-called age of heroes was especially significant for the romantic historiography and literature of the early nineteenth century, which treated the period as a time when history had transformed itself into mythology, and vice versa, where baroque mythology became history. The same idea dominated historians' accounts of this period in the twentieth century as well. Eugene of Savoy, a prince in the service of three emperors of the baroque period: Leopold I, Joseph I, and Charles VI, are the chief protagonists of the “age of heroes” and of the related “Habsburg myth” that also rested on the events of this age. The biography of Prince Eugene and his role in promoting the growth of the Habsburg Empire were integrated into the nineteenth- and twentieth-century myths about the Austrian or Habsburg past. The Habsburg ideal of a Central Europe united under the dynasty rests primarily on the achievements of Prince Eugene. Moreover, the absence of any memoirs or political writings by the prince made it easier to create numerous differing interpretations of his life and its significance. The myths promoted in the biographies of Prince Eugene were, time and again, largely accepted and recycled by historians and writers loyal to the Habsburg dynasty. Among the ranks of historians who engaged in this mythmaking we can recognize visionaries of “modern Austria,” representatives of pan-Germanism, “Greater Germany,” and radical pro-Nazi writers or National Socialists themselves.Footnote 1
Prince Eugene of Savoy: Selected Approaches and Interpretations of His Biography
Between Myth and Reality
A basic knowledge of the biography of Prince Eugene clearly points to a complex personality that is difficult to categorize from the start. This hero to Austria, and later to Germany, was in fact, to the discomfort of many, born in France. This disquieting fact was nevertheless transformed for use in the national hero myth, and numerous biographies romanticized or trivialized its relevance. National historians approached these segments of his biography in different ways, recounting, for example, stories about Eugene's time in France, or his libertine mother and her affair with King Louis XIV. Their intent was nevertheless clear: to depict Eugene of Savoy as a strong pillar of the Habsburg monarchy. The Habsburgs, in turn, found a forceful exponent in the prince. All three rulers of the baroque period, Leopold I, Joseph I, and Charles VI, gained glory through Prince Eugene's military victories, and he became the most famous military commander in Europe at the time. For many, he was a model war strategist, and his army was thought to be invincible after 1704. During Eugene's lifetime, a myth of military greatness had already been constructed, one which would survive until the dynasty's fall in 1918 and continue to flourish in artistic and historiographic representations of Austria and the other successor states until the present day.
Prince Eugene became an integral part of the “Habsburg myth,” at the moment of that myth's creation at the end of Habsburg territorial and ideological domination in Central Europe, at the beginning of the reign of Francis I and the rise of Napoleon.Footnote 2 In the nineteenth century, Austria again sought to revive the hegemony and power that it had achieved two centuries earlier with the help of Prince Eugene, and Austrian ideologists again invoked his myth. Eugene symbolized not only the military might and invincibility of the monarchy, but also an idea of Austria, a particular political vision whose content remained constant despite numerous policy changes during the nineteenth century. In that sense, the statue of Prince Eugene of Savoy erected in Vienna's Heldenplatz [Heroes' Square] in 1865 represented not only the unity of the empire that is safeguarded by the military,Footnote 3 but also the supranational idea of a monarchy that brought together the peoples of Central Europe and the Balkans under the Habsburg dynasty. This is probably the key reason why Austria erected dual equestrian monuments to both Prince Eugene and Archduke Charles of Austria (hero of the Napoleonic wars). Anton Dominik Fernkorn's bronze statue of the prince was placed on the square's central axis in 1865. The power of symbolism was never lost on the monarchy: Fernkorn's monument was dedicated in Vienna on 18 October 1865, Eugene's birthday. The dedication ceremony was honored by the presence of Emperor Francis Joseph I and the Empress Elisabeth, city and state dignitaries, and it included a military marching band, an army parade, gun salutes by the military regiment, a Te Deum, and the inevitable rendition of the song Prinz Eugen, der edler Ritter sung by a choir. For a brief moment, the ceremony drew the attention of the monarchy to Vienna and its glorious past.Footnote 4
Prince Eugene had by this point become a phenomenon of mass culture. His name and face were marketed on pictures of the monument, schools assigned essays about the prince, and theaters presented commemorative plays.Footnote 5 The liberal daily Neue Freie Presse reminded its readership of Eugene's wisdom and statesmanship, which the emperors of the time had not always heeded. Eugene's vision of a powerful Austria supported by Germany and his awareness of the need for a strong and protected Hungary could be read as both a criticism of past courtly dynastic politics, as well as of the current political power plays. Eugene's desire to solidify Austria as a power in the east collided with Emperor Charles' intentions in the west.Footnote 6 This thinking reflected the current political polemics on the status of Hungary in the monarchy, connecting Eugene's firm approach on Hungary with contemporary political solutions.
While the Neue Freie Presse text on the new monument ends on an ironic note—pointing out that luckily enough money had actually been found to erect the statue,Footnote 7 the Wiener Zeitung praised Fernkorn's monumental statue—“Marschall des Reiches.”Footnote 8 The Leipzig Illustrierte Zeitung pointed out that the monarchy was trying to make amends with its history, although the key anniversary had been missed for Eugene's statue—his two hundredth birthday had already passed.Footnote 9Die Presse, a more conservative Viennese newspaper, reported on the day of the monument's dedication that Eugene's accomplishments were not of the same quality as Friedrich the Great's or Napoleon's. Eugene had been no conqueror or despot, but rather a “hero and preserver.”Footnote 10
According to the paper, Eugene personified all the best human virtues one should aspire to, as they might be found in Livy's History of Rome. Quoting Heinrich von Sybel, the article called Eugene a model statesman who had understood the needs of the monarchy, who had unequivocally stood alongside the German element, at the same time not forgetting the other “tribes” of the empire, especially the Hungarians.Footnote 11 This policy of commemoration continued. In the midst of severe nationalist conflict, for example, Francis Joseph I personally financed a statue of Eugene to be placed directly in front of the Buda Castle in 1900—clearly sending a political message to Hungarian politicians.Footnote 12 In this way nineteenth-century ideologists asserted that the particular qualities attributed to Prince Eugene—his determination, courage, wisdom, and care for the well-being of a state crucial to Europe's heartland—also served as a potential answer to the burning problems the Habsburg monarchy faced in the latter half of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth centuries. As a successful military leader, a preserver of the monarchy, Eugene also symbolized unity. This symbolic role could only be performed by Prince Eugene.
When Austria suffered losses at Solferino (1859) or Sadowa (1866),Footnote 13 a figure of Prince Eugene's stature served as a symbol that reinforced the historic glory and power of the house of Habsburg. His image could also provide social cohesion in times of multinational discord, serving as a reminder of a glorious path shaped by Habsburg politics and the role of the dynasty in liberating the lands from the Ottoman peril. In this sense, Eugene served as a symbolic protector of the monarchy and its gatekeeper, literally “des deutschen Reiches Türhüter.”Footnote 14
In the last years of Austria-Hungary, the more military aspect of Prince Eugene's personality came to the forefront. On the eve of World War I, the Prinz Eugen Marsch was played to the masses gathered in front of the Ballplatz and the War Ministry, in a sign of patriotism.Footnote 15 Songs about the prince were sung at the front and in the barracks—these are reflected in literature by authors as diverse as Jaroslav Hašek to Miroslav Krleža. An even greater emphasis was put on the role of Eugene in the preservation of the monarchy and of Austria itself. The artist Franz Wacik used his talents to transport Eugene into contemporary times in a children's book Prinz Eugen der edle Ritter (1915, text by Hugo von Hofmannsthal), who sent soldiers at the front messages of hope and encouragement. That same year, a propaganda poster by Emil Ranzenhofer for the film Der Traum eines österreichischen Reservisten [produced by “Wiener Kunstfilm”] pictured a well-supplied reserve soldier, who sees a vision of Prince Eugene on horseback during a blizzard. In 1914, shortly after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, postcards appeared depicting Austro-Hungarian ground forces storming Belgrade with Prince Eugene at their head. During the war, the Habsburg myth was also transformed into the myth of Prince Eugene as the founder of Austria. Hugo von Hofmannsthal mythologized Prince Eugene, extracting him from the “Habsburg pantheon,” seeking instead to turn him into a symbol of “Austrianism.” From now on, Eugene's Adlerblick was no longer a part of Habsburg symbolism; it became a part of Austria itself.Footnote 16 The Prince himself, according to Hofmannsthal, became a symbol of Austria's role in Europe between the west and north from which it “received” intellectual, spiritual and cultural gifts, and the east and south to which it “gave.”Footnote 17 This connection of Prince Eugene with the notion of Austria was maintained during both the First Republic and the Second Republic.
The Origin “Problem”
Prince Eugene came from a family with Byzantine and Armenian ancestors. In the early modern era, the family spread across Europe, but alongside the Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, Polish, Czech, and Lithuanian branches, the French one was dominant. Eugene was a relative of Emperor Charles V, Francis I of France, and of Lorenzo Medici. Thomas Aquinas can be found in his family tree, as well as French medieval military commanders Bertrand du Guesclin (c. 1320–1380), who won many battles for his country in the Hundred Years' War, and Olivier de Clisson (1326–1407).Footnote 18 His dynasty's policy of marriage in the east of the continent served as a bridge between Europe and Asia. This is why many princes and khans can be found in his family tree and relatively few German or Austrian connections.
Still, genealogy does not tell us much. The cosmopolitan nature of the Holy Roman Empire's court had allowed “foreigners” to ascend to high military and political office. The French state, too, tolerated families who were directly connected to the enemy—Austria, for example, the Gonzaga family. There is a whole library of books that deals with this early modern era phenomenon, called princes étrangers in France.Footnote 19 Unlike these foreigners at the French court, however, Prince Eugene never mastered the German language of his Habsburg emperor sufficiently. A large part of his correspondence was written in French or Latin.Footnote 20 Again, this is no exception. The Habsburg court was polyglottic, and among the many languages spoken there were Spanish, Italian, and naturally, French. The only thing Eugene did in German was to sign his name “Eugenio von Savoie.” This fact was also the subject of mythology, for the purpose of sustaining Austria's post-1848 multinational cohesion. A prince who wrote in three languages pointed directly to his supposed indifference to differences in nationality in Austrian society. It also underlined the unity provided by the Habsburgs.Footnote 21 Later historiography “mistakenly accepted” the “Eugen von Savoy” version of the signature, displacing the Italian spelling and replacing it with the German “von Savoy,” which also replaced the French “Savoie.”Footnote 22
However, his origins were often used by historians to make the opposite point as well. In the interwar period, many essayists, for example, characterized Austria as the first nation of Europe, a land that had been founded on the basis of many peoples of Europe, one that had created the Austrian from the non-Austrian.Footnote 23 Naturally, a prince of French origins who attained glory in Austria served as an ideal example of such a process. The issue of his origins was a political advantage. An “Italian,” “French,” or “German” Eugene was propped up according to need. This “diplomatic finesse” was especially relevant in the 1930s and 1940s; for example, Ribbentrop did not miss an opportunity during the First Vienna arbitration in the Belvedere to mention to Ciano that they were in the palace of a German statesman of Italian ancestry.Footnote 24 The image of Prince Eugene was an ideal fit for the rhetoric of National Socialists in Austria. When they wanted to accentuate the importance of the Balkans, Eugene's name carried weight; the SS Volunteer Mountain Division “Prinz Eugen” was supposed to spread fear in the Balkans in accordance with the memory of Eugene's invincibility, just as the songs of Eugene were broadcast on the day of the attack on Belgrade. Eugene's supranational character was almost ideal for politicians such as Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach who knew that in mentioning Eugene they would accomplish for Nazi ideology what their colleagues in Germany had done with Friedrich the Great and other German heroes.
Invincible Commander and Unifier of Europe
Robert A. Kann wrote of the prince as “the greatest general ever to serve the interests of Habsburgs.”Footnote 25 One might argue with this claim, but it would certainly defeat its purpose—mentioning the battles of Zenta (1697), Blenheim (1704), Turin (1706), Oudenarde (1708), Petrovaradin (1716), and Belgrade (1717) brings up some of the most legendary military successes of both Prince Eugene and the monarchy. His conduct in the Siege of Vienna (1683) and the war of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) exemplifies his campaigns and military prowess, as well as his loyalty to the dynasty. His campaigns in the east brought him special recognition and popular approval, solidifying his heroic status. Prince Eugene became a symbol of Habsburg power, the survival of the monarchy, and its purpose. He carried forth the message of Habsburg power in the east and west: The noble prince showed that the Austrian dynasty subjugated no longer merely through marriage but also through military might.
Eugene was often glorified in historiography as a unifier of Europe and as a peacemaker. Indeed, in his twilight years, the prince came to share Emperor Charles VI's worries about the monarchy's very survival. While Charles dealt with the challenge of ensuring the throne for his daughter Maria Theresa, Prince Eugene dealt with the problems of sustaining the stability of the state. This is why he supported a more peaceful policy toward France, along with the necessity of an alliance among Austria, Russia, and Prussia.Footnote 26 After 1945, this peaceful vision of Eugene appeared with more frequency in historians' works. It grew out of an attempt to avoid giving him a defined national identity, but it also seems to be the product of a post-1945 interpretation of history. This can best be seen in the new edition of Wolfgang Oppenheimer's biography of Prince Eugene, where an introduction by Otto von Habsburg portrayed Eugene's actions as “European.”Footnote 27 In a Europe in which peace was now equated with power, Eugene's military campaigns were of secondary importance to his role as a unifier and patron of the arts. Although at the time of Prince Eugene, the monarchy had a firm international policy, representing a cornerstone of European diplomacy, the problems of the succession and the Pragmatic Sanction ruptured that policy so that the Habsburg vision of Europe in the late seventeenth century, made possible by Eugene's victories, was eventually left in tatters. Ironically, the disagreement between Eugene and Emperor Charles VI on the issue of foreign policy and the Pragmatic Sanction, more precisely Eugene's advice that “the only guarantee worth having was an army of two hundred thousand men and a full treasury,”Footnote 28 led interwar historians of Eugene to conclude that the prince's wisdom was circumvented by Habsburg politics, which in turn halted an opportunity for Austrian/German superiority. Such a vision of Eugene was simply supplanted after 1945.
Prince Eugene in Nineteenth-century Historiography
During his lifetime, Eugene's exploits were already mentioned in song; the popular song Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter dates from 1717 and the conquest of Belgrade.Footnote 29 The strong bond between Prince Eugene and his campaigns against the Turks were mirrored in the traumatized consciousness of the Croatian intellectual elite, for example, who praised Eugene (Ivan Frantica Sorkočević) or expected the downfall of the Ottoman Empire thanks to his victories (as did Ruđer Bošković). The Viennese Court encouraged such opinion, using pamphlets and songs for propaganda purposes during the prince's lifetime. Politics recognized the myth in its earliest stages and went on to exploit the image of the prince in future propaganda after Eugene's death.
Almost immediately after Prince Eugene's death, the first biographies appeared in the guise of hagiographic descriptions of his heroic deeds. Turbulent times enveloped the monarchy just before the Wars of the Succession, and the Prince's popularity contributed to this. In 1736, the first Eugene “Helden-Thaten” appeared, written in several volumes by an anonymous author. This account of Eugene's life and work was subsequently translated into English. In Italy, the Jesuit Guido Ferrari started publishing in 1747 a multivolume detailed military history of Prince Eugene.Footnote 30 Éléazar Mauvillon (1712–1779), a teacher of French and the secret secretary to the king of Poland and the elector of Dresden, was among the first who wrote about Eugene. Already in 1740, he published the Histoire militaire du Prince Eugène de Savoye, which became the basis for all further biographies. Still, this biography has significant shortcomings in the life story, some of which the author could not know much of at the time. Only when the legacy of Prince Eugene was compiled, with some convenient unearthing of his documents and the regulation of archives in the nineteenth century, could his life story be properly reconstructed. After an unauthorized edition of the Mémoires du prince Eugène de Savoie Footnote 31 appeared at the beginning of the century, which was later found to be Prince Charles Ligne's part plagiarism of Mauvillon's work, and part pure fantasy; the Viennese librarian Joseph von Sartori (1740–1812) published in 1811 a collection of letters and documents written by Prince Eugene. Although Sartori's work shed new light on aspects of Eugene's life that were not connected to his military successes, the authenticity of his documentary evidence has been questioned. These works formed the basis of some later biographies and collections of letters that were even more suspicious.Footnote 32
Alfred von Arneth (1819–1897), the famous Austrian historian, wrote a comprehensive biography of Eugene of Savoy in 1858, using materials from the Viennese archives.Footnote 33 The Arneth study, although it is based on sources such as the rich correspondence or military documents that were at his disposal as deputy director of the archive, still contains some elements of mythology. Naturally, it should also be seen as a typical product of nineteenth-century romantic historiography. With this book, Arneth gained fame and recognition among Austrian historians, although the German historian Heinrich von Sybel complained that one could not see the forest for the trees—details hid the more general historical picture; according to Sybel, Arneth had made little effort to probe further than the standard “official” points about the prince's life. Sybel's criticism of Arneth shows the different positions of German and Austrian historians.Footnote 34 While Austrian historians tended to base their efforts on a detailed political and military history, German historians sought to find a deeper meaning in history, one with spiritual relevance, rooted in the history of ideas. In Sybel's own idealistic interpretation of the prince, he followed a more philosophical approach, seeking the line connecting particular historical phenomena with the universal element of history.
Sybel and Arneth followed different paths, both shaped by their careers and research choices. Arneth's biography constituted the significant breakthrough of his career—in 1865, during the dedication of Eugene's monument in Vienna, Francis Joseph I did not fail to decorate him for his services with the Order of the Iron Crown.Footnote 35 Less than two years after publishing his work, Arneth was promoted to the post of archive director. In that post, he led a shift in historical science toward covering topics from the history of the Habsburgs, and doing so using a more detailed scientific analysis of the sources, which had been kept secret before his time.Footnote 36 At that time, documents on Habsburg history were not readily accessible—Arneth's biography of Eugene served as evidence of the fact that he—using a historian's methodology—had described the glory of the Habsburg dynasty.Footnote 37
Arneth portrays Eugene almost as a divine being, writing that his “complete purity and moral greatness” is left “unblemished.”Footnote 38 Arneth placed him above all the later great figures of Austria, since his own people adored him.Footnote 39 By his “own,” Arneth meant the “people(s) of the Monarchy.” Arneth's interest is not fully taken by politics, patriotism, and war exploits. He also researches, in detail, Eugene's opinions about other contemporaries, and he also tries to ascertain how the prince gained his riches.Footnote 40
In light of nineteenth-century conflicts with Prussia, Austrian historiography had something of an informal mandate issued by the government to counter Berlin's claims and to locate evidence of Austrian superiority. A return to examples from the seventeenth century, when the Holy Roman Empire had been ruled by a Habsburg emperor served the ideological purpose of readying the country for war in 1866. Arneth's multivolume biography of the prince, published in 1864, was exceptionally popular in Austria and was republished in an expanded version finished by Franz Keym in 1899.Footnote 41 Between these two editions, the Viennese War Archive, under the direction of the War Ministry, began publishing the Feldzüge des Prinzen Eugen von Savoyen. Nach den Feld-Acten und andern authentischen Quellen in several volumes from 1876 to 1892. The title alone indicates that this work was not a biography, but rather an analysis of Eugene's military campaigns, based on documents drawn from the War Archive, documents that in the words of the historian Theodor Tupetz proved “the greatness of Eugene the general.”Footnote 42 These volumes explored particular campaigns, presenting detailed political and military accounts of each alongside the documents. The importance and quality of this publication is seen from the fact that contemporary studies of military history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often cited it as a reference work.
The myth, which had been constructed by historians, now found fertile ground in literature and poetry. In Germany, Friedrich Wilhelm Zimmermann (1807–1878) wrote Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter und seine Zeit (1836), inspired by the title of the ballad that had become popular after Eugene's siege of Belgrade in 1717. The main sources Zimmerman used to construct his narrative were falsified memoirs, and his historical tale is full of unsubstantiated judgments and subjective interpretations. He portrayed Eugene as a prince who fought for his people and his emperor against many conspirators in Vienna, and a diplomat who stunted and denigrated his successes on the battlefield.Footnote 43 Zimmermann could not resist adding that Eugene's heir was “an even greater Friedrich the Unique”—the Prussian hero Fredrick II who witnessed Eugene's military demise.Footnote 44 The German writer Clara Mundt's (who wrote under the name Louise Mülbach, 1814–1873) work Prinz Eugen und seine Zeit became famous at the same time. It relied on the prince's biography, but it is also burdened with inaccuracies and the author's romantic embellishments.Footnote 45
By the end of the nineteenth century, a more scholarly based approach had evolved in the realm of historiography. A range of new and differing interpretations of the prince's life and work based on different elements of his biography, some factual, some not, emerged during this period. The “complete” lives of the prince found a readership, one example being the lectures of Heinrich Moritz von Richter that summarized and recounted the findings of historiography on Eugene of Savoy up to that point.Footnote 46 Separate studies in the form of articles also appeared, which examined specific aspects or periods of Eugene's life and work. The art historian and expert on the baroque period Albert Ilg (1847–1896) was among the first who pointed out the prince's role in the construction of baroque Vienna and Austria in his book Prinz Eugen von Savoyen als Kunstfreund (1889). In the author's words, it was a sketch,Footnote 47 neither complete nor definitive, but it nevertheless constituted an influential contribution, much noted in later studies of art and cultural history of the time of Prince Eugene.Footnote 48
The influence of Austrian historians—and especially Arneth—with regard to Prince Eugene, can also be found in several works by non-German historians of the monarchy, as well. In his history textbook on the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the Croatian historian Vjekoslav Klaić (1849–1928) portrayed Prince Eugene as a hero who in key moments always brought victory to Austria in times of adversity. Klaić also wrote of the deep sorrow that befell the emperor and the army on hearing of Eugene's passing. In this way, Klaić adapted elements of the Austrian heroization to Croatian historiography. The death of Eugene, in this interpretation, signaled the downfall of Austrian military strength from its highpoint in the seventeenth century.Footnote 49 The same sentiment was more clearly expressed in Šimun Balenović's Povjestnica hrvatskoga naroda (1870), when he wrote that the death of Prince Eugene, “a true hero of our Kingdom,” was immediately apparent in the subsequent military failures and losses.Footnote 50 One of the most prominent Croatian historians of his generation, Ferdo Šišić (1869–1940), also mentioned Eugene in a brief note, declaring him to have been one of the greatest generals of his time.Footnote 51 In any case, their works elicited little response in Croatia: Regime critics and the political opposition could not celebrate Eugene for the very reason that his victories had come with the price of a weaker position for the Croatian lands in the monarchy.Footnote 52
In the meantime, a greater interest in the life of Prince Eugene rose outside Austria-Hungary and Germany. George Bruce Malleson (1825–1898), a writer and British officer in India, wrote the first military biography of the prince, to be published in English. Malleson used most of the accessible and famous biographies of Eugene, he saw Eugene as a glorious general and a hero, but he also highlighted his personality. He compared the prince's last battles to those of Napoleon and Friedrich the Great, who faced their own fears of compromising defeat.Footnote 53 Domenico Carutti (1821–1909) published his brief study of the prince's youth in Italy; it was more connected to the history of Savoy, which was Carutti's usual research interest.Footnote 54 Francesco Ambrosi, Angelo Berenzi, Adriano Jones, Vittorio Adami, and others wrote about Prince Eugene's campaign in Italy, his magnificent victory at Turin, and his administration in Milan.Footnote 55 Along with the tendency to highlight the prince's Italian background, Italian historiography retained an interest in the campaigns in Italy in the coming decades.
Even more interest in Prince Eugene was shown by the nineteenth-century German historians coming from the “Ranke School,” such as Heinrich von Sybel, Theodor Heigel, Aloys Schulte, and later Theodor Schieder and Helmut Oehler.
Aloys Schulte wrote a history of the prince in his younger years, the phase in which he could most easily be portrayed as an heroic individual. However, Schulte, a very atypical historian for his time, did not fall under the spell of those who had attempted to mystify Eugene's background. Instead of this, he wrote a study of his character, concluding that Eugene possessed the character of a soldier, which led to his soldierly loyalty that did not depend on his roots.Footnote 56 He did not dispel myths, but he never constructed new ones.
In 1861, Heinrich von Sybel (1817–1895), one of the most famous historians in the nineteenth century, and founder of the first German historical journal Historische Zeitschrift, published three lectures on Prince Eugene and later wrote a brief biography. The biography is a standard work based on Arneth's and Mauvillon's work, but it also focused on some other aspects of Eugene's life and career. For Sybel, the dominant issues are the roles that the prince played in the creation of Austria, his Deutschtum, and his dissent from the ruling Habsburg dynasty—a constant struggle to establish a different vision of the monarchy. Sybel wrote that this “born Frenchman of Italian parentage, showed his German manner and sense in every way.”Footnote 57 Furthermore, he called Eugene “the founder of modern Austria” and a “conscious patriot,” the person who made possible the creation of the “Donaureich” and “secured the boundaries of Christianity.”Footnote 58 From his position in Catholic Munich, Sybel held a different view of Prussia and its hegemony in Germany, for example, than did a Prussian nationalist historian like Johann Gustav Droysen. Sybel sought to bring Austrian history closer to his German readership, to uncover this Terra incognita, as he called it, for a German audience. Still, to Sybel Eugene was for Austria what Droysen's Field Marshal Count Yorck von Wartenburg was to Prussia. All the qualities that Sybel extolled in his hero were those longed for among Prussians.
Prince Eugene from the Final Decades of the Habsburg Monarchy to 1945
The monarchy's last years saw a renewed interest in the glorious years of the empire and dynasty. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the publication of popular novels and biographies occurred more and more frequently, as did public demonstrations in honor of Prince Eugene. The already mentioned 1865 dedication of Eugene's equestrian monument in Vienna, for example, provided the opportunity for the presentation of a rich cultural program: A concert arrangement of Johann Herbeck's patriotic Festgesang über die alte Weise ‘Prinz Eugenius’ was performed, and Josef Strauss presented his Prinz Eugen Marsch op. 186 in the Volksgarten.Footnote 59 A one-act operetta titled Prinz Eugen was performed in Neulerchenfeld, while the folk play Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter was held in Leopoldstadt's Carltheater. The writer of the play, journalist Anton Lager, received some criticism: The play was pronounced to be tendentious, and the mistakes and inaccuracies were uncovered by both journalists and historians. In the festivities that went on throughout that day, the figure of the prince appeared in the Burgtheater, played by Joseph Lewinsky, a popular actor who had recently been promoted as Wirklicher Hofschauspieler but shared no physical resemblance to the prince. This happened during the Festspiel entitled Am Tag von Oudenarde by Joseph von Weiler, which in spite of numerous historical inaccuracies received many favorable reviews.Footnote 60
At the close of the nineteenth century, Eugene's image was invoked as a tool by nationalist movements, sometimes in the hope of awakening patriotic fervor, sometimes in the service of political manipulation. It has been noted that Georg von Schönerer used the melody of the song edler Ritter with his version Ritter Georg hoch!—exploiting the figure of Eugene for his contemporary political goals.Footnote 61 Eugene's origins and life, his historical persona, all but disappeared in these manipulations, while the superficial symbolism gained in importance as a bid for mass public support.
During the twentieth century, and particularly at the time of the two world wars, popular invocation of the myth of Prince Eugene as a patriot intensified. This can be noticed in the writing of Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929), who used anecdotes, legends, and stories to transform the historical person of the prince into a colorful figure who taught a lesson for contemporary times. In Prince Eugene, alongside Maria Theresa and Franz Grillparzer, Hofmannsthal located the very definition of Austrian qualities.Footnote 62 Hofmannsthal willfully avoided using the biographical form, although he used Eugene's life story as a basis for his work. He wrote about Eugene's background but placed it in a different context from previous writers. Hofmannsthal's aim was to portray Eugene as a hero of old Austria, in fact, as its savior.Footnote 63 He evoked the prince's figure in his own time, seeking a new motivation for Austrian patriotism from legendary figures like Prince Eugene, saying that “every atom of him is living.”Footnote 64 The symbolism Hofmannsthal attributed to Prince Eugene is traced to Eugene's military successes, thereby shifting the context of his analogy after the fall of the Habsburg monarchy and locating an authentic Austrian way, a destiny for the homeland.Footnote 65
During the interwar period, historical novels, with heroes from the past as main characters, grew in popularity. Semiaccurate novels about Prince Eugene by Walter von Molo and Alfons Czibulka appeared in the 1930s.Footnote 66 The writer Alfons von Czibulka (1888–1969) did not even try to avoid the problems posed by Eugene's “foreign” family background or other “flaws” in his biography. Czibulka saw Eugene as an Italian, not as a Frenchman, as a worshipper of Spain and opponent of what he called Europe's greatest danger: France. According to Czibulka, Eugene's support for Austria meant a future German power, an “eternal Reich”—the Third Reich—sought to decipher from his legacy.Footnote 67 Such novels, although they cannot completely be seen as written in the spirit of nationalism and the later National Socialist ideology, were popular reading on the fronts of Europe and tried to portray Eugene as the prototype of a hero, a soldier, and a commander. In this way, the prince lost all individual traits, and all possible flaws were carefully quashed or justified in order to maintain the hero's unblemished reputation.Footnote 68
At the time of the First Republic, a new historiographic interpretation of Prince Eugene's military campaigns appeared, and Eberhard Ritter's book Politik und Kriegführung: Ihre Beherrschung durch Prinz Eugen, 1704 should be analyzed in this context. The new interpretation was not much noted at the time, in spite of the book's original analysis of the relationship between the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, as well as the author's use of English sources.Footnote 69 With the stabilization of the Austrian Republic, the trend of connecting Prince Eugene to the state idea became stronger. A clear example is the exhibition on Eugene in the Belvedere on the 250th anniversary of the liberation of Vienna in April 1933. The dignitaries were led by Chancellor Dollfuß and President Wilhelm Miklas, who emphasized Eugene's patriotism, his mission for Austria “which with pride and affection we call our Vaterland,” and the importance of the campaign for liberating the occident.Footnote 70 This was followed by a production of Hans Sassmann's play Prinz Eugen von Savoyen (1933) in the Burgtheater. The experienced Sassmann, who had previously perfected his trade in historical dramas, portrayed Eugene in terms of contemporary politics, propaganda, and historiography. Sassmann emphasized the political and military aspects of Eugene's life, especially his struggles against the Turks, while showing the Habsburgs in a less favorable and (according to one review) “Hispanified” light.Footnote 71 All of this bolstered the image of Eugene as statesman, who in his actions formed the bedrock of a modern Austria. Theater reviewers were themselves not oblivious to the politics and propaganda of the play, and their opinions were mostly unfavorable.
In general, the Austro-Fascist regime (1934–1938) attempted to integrate important and recognizable elements from the Habsburg monarchy into its own ideology, finding in the symbolism of Eugene a direct connection to the age of heroes. Oswald Redlich (1858–1944), an expert in Habsburg history and one of Austria's greatest historians, promoted the concept of “greater Austria.” Reiterating the position of his historian predecessors, Redlich saw in Eugene a precursor to Frederick the Great of Prussia and Napoleon, recognizing his role in creating a powerful Austria. In Eugene, he recognized an “unforgettable symbol of old Austria,” as a European force.Footnote 72 Redlich wrote this in the foreword to the 1933 Vienna exhibition catalogue, dedicated to Prince Eugene. Redlich's aim was clear: In the spirit of the times, he castigated the Metternich regime and drew a clear line between the nineteenth-century monarchy and the Großmacht of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, just as the politics of the time tried to forget the 1918 downfall by constructing its own “Austrian national program” on the basis of an earlier period. The catalogue covered two main topics: on the one hand, Eugene's military successes (in particular the eastern campaigns) and, on the other hand, his involvement in the culture of the Austrian baroque. All the texts of the catalogue, from the one by Redlich to those of Otto Brunner, Bruno Grimschitz, Josef Nadler, and others, more or less connect Eugene's time to the idea of Austria as the preconditions that led to the formation of the modern Austrian nation state. In his brief recapitulation, the historian Wilhelm John (1877–1934) located the mark of Eugene's spirit deep in the very being of the Imperial Army.Footnote 73 Eugene's campaigns, his successes and glory, his victories in both east and west now served as an important reminder of greatness to a traumatized Austria, which in a span of a few brief months had been transformed from a great power to a Central European failed state in which nobody believed.
In the 1930s, historians and writers came together on great anniversaries, as in the 1933 anniversary or in 1936—when for the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Eugene's death on 21 April. As usual, the festivities lasted several days and began before the actual date of the anniversary itself. Parallel festivities were held in Vienna, as well as in the rest of the country, bringing historiography and politics together in the most diverse ways. The new Austrian Ständestaat took advantage of the example of Eugene's statesmanship and military glory, permeating all its ceremonies with examples of these ideas. Newspapers frequently dedicated articles to Eugene, from Oswald Redlich in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, to the columnists in many other dailies. The historian Heinrich Kretschmayr (1870–1939) recapitulated Eugene's biography in brief for the Wiener Zeitung, proclaiming him to have been a promoter of Deutschtum who had found “bliss, work and friends” under the “Austrian sun”—his homeland of choice.Footnote 74 The Neues Wiener Journal expressed a similar sentiment when it wrote that Austria had given the prince a homeland, “a mission and a goal.”Footnote 75Das Kleine Blatt dedicated its title page to the prince on 21 April 1936, while the midsection had an article celebrating the prince who had enabled a cultural blossoming of an “Austrian baroque” through his victories.”Footnote 76
Certainly, one can see the influence of on these commemorations of both historiography and art history, which had by that time begun insisting on interpreting the baroque as a distinctly Austrian national style. The radio program was also in tune with the general ceremony. Among others the historian Heinrich von Srbik gave a lecture entitled “Die weltpolitischen Umrisse der Prinz-Eugen-Zeit.” A parade was held on Monday, 20 April, in the center of Vienna. The assembled townspeople, schoolchildren, and members of the state leadership, it was reported, were “unified by the military festivities,” while one of the highpoints was the oration by President Miklas, who emphasized the importance of the Heldenzeitalter ideals that were so closely joined to the figure of Eugene, ideals that should serve modern Austria as models of action.Footnote 77
On the next day, the Wiener Zeitung concluded its report on the festivities with a reminder of the president's speech on Eugene as a symbol of unity and patriotism, saying that the celebration would help the “new Austria” merge its military and its people.Footnote 78 One could not miss the political importance of the event: One day earlier the representatives of the military missions of Germany, Italy, and Hungary had laid wreaths at Eugene's monument. The Italian ambassador had invited the state leadership led by Vice Chancellor Starhemberg to a breakfast. Outside Austria a military parade in Berlin took the opportunity to commemorate the anniversary by pointing to a common German spirit.Footnote 79 During this period the hero-worship grew, and this is reflected in the fact that in the decade from 1932 to 1942, over twenty biographies or literary works about Eugene were published.Footnote 80
Music remained a genre that continued to find new meaning in the symbolism of Eugene; it was enriched by the variations on the song Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter by Paul Hindemith (1926) and Paul Graener (1939). When Bruno Böhm in 1943 published an exhaustive bibliography of works about Price Eugene, he listed 1,800 titles.Footnote 81 The politics of the Republic encouraged this heroization, as it tried to construct a clear identity for a state that had renounced its defining dynasty. Still, Austrian historiography did not allow itself to be entrapped by a purely German historiography. The influence of historism coexisted with influences of the French school and with a tradition of criticism of historical sources, which was propagated by Theodor von Sickel, a German historian who headed the Austrian Historical Institute.
This heroization of Eugene later became an integral part of Hitler's ideology with the advent of the Anschluss. The best example for these efforts can be traced to the work of Viktor Bibl (1870–1947), an Austrian professor of history who wrote his works under the influence of Nazism after the Anschluss of 1938. Bibl used Eugene as a means to connect Austria and Germany and their allegedly inseparable destinies more closely. This can be seen graphically at the very beginning of Bibl's 1941 biography of Eugene, which he dedicated to the German Wehrmacht. Bibl saw Eugene as a “German hero “who had founded a so-called “Pax Germanica”Footnote 82 and who had turned Austria's attentions toward the east.Footnote 83 In this way, Eugene could be understood as a precursor of modern attempts at expansion that involved the subjugation of the east.Footnote 84 What is more, Bibl also wrote that Eugene had taken a decisive stand against the Jews. He claims that the prince commanded the “observation” and “removal” of dishonest Jewish traders.Footnote 85 Unlike historians of the interwar period, however, Bibl was not interested in Austria in a strict ideological sense. He wrote that the “Prince's genius escaped to the Hohenzollern state,” and of “Austria's return home,”Footnote 86 which had taken place on 15 March 1938 with Hitler's speech from the Hofburg balcony high above the Heldenplatz and Eugene's equestrian monument. In a symbolic sense, the path that historiography had left earlier—Eugene as the embodiment of an Austrian myth—was taken up on a political level in 1938, by portraying a “German Eugene.”
A similar trend to the one exemplified by Bibl's writing can be seen in a wider European context. The Croatian lawyer Slavko Pavičić (1885–1948), who published a military and war history of Croatia in 1943, represented Prince Eugene as a friend to the Croatians who had followed him into battle and as a hero who had liberated the Croatians from the Ottoman threat.Footnote 87 For Pavičić, Eugene symbolized a bond that connected the dynasty and a specifically German spirit with the Croatians, something that was highly relevant for the political situation in 1943. German propaganda in the Independent State of Croatia also used the figure of Prince Eugene as a symbol of a common victory over the Turks and as a promoter of the Reich idea, when it claimed that he had colonized the Danubian region of Croatia.Footnote 88
The Austro-German historian Heinrich von Srbik (1878–1951) wrote several works consonant with these propagandistic images, albeit in greater depth. He was one of the first to integrate Eugene into German national mythology, emphasizing that which was allegedly gesamtdeutsch,Footnote 89 that which was German in the Frenchman who served Austria. Srbik never went as far as Bibl, however, in this regard. Srbik approached the problems brought out by Sybel and Bibl in an innovative fashion. Sybel's easygoing manner of exposition was transformed by Srbik into a rigorous analysis of the pan-German spirit. Srbik demonstrated the prince's spiritual Deutschtum, which could neither be negated nor confirmed supported with the sparse archival sources on Eugene's political thought. As an “intellectual great-grandson of Ranke,” as Srbik liked to call himself, he sought out the historical connections between Germany and Austria and the continuity of Austrian thought since 1814. A collection of his essays from 1949,Footnote 90 which contains his pre- and postwar thoughts, is seen by some historians as proof of his continuous search for an Austrian spirit.Footnote 91 Srbik saw Eugene as a savior of both Austria and Germany, that is, of the entire Holy Roman Empire,Footnote 92 but also as an opponent of the rise of Prussia to the level of a kingdom.Footnote 93 According to Srbik, the creation of a Donaumonarchie, made possible by the actions of Eugene of Savoy, happened at a time when an idea of a Central European empire was predominant, and there was no idea of an independent Austrian state.Footnote 94 By helping Austria and the dynasty, Eugene had helped the empire and the German people.Footnote 95
Srbik's student Hellmuth Rössler (1910–1968) wrote the book Der Soldat des Reiches, Prinz Eugen (1940), offering a similar analysis as his teacher but with much less scholarly depth. In 1942, Rössler presented Eugene as one in a line of statesmen who understood the necessary link between Austria and Germany and the crucial German role in Central Europe—a line that ended with Adolf Hitler.Footnote 96 Rössler considered Eugene to be not only the typical Pan-German general, but also a crucial factor in the creation of a powerful German army. This concept is also asserted in the multivolume Entwicklungsgeschichte des deutschen Heerwesens. An even more aggressive interpretation was put forward by the German historian Walter Elze (1891–1980), who presented the prince as a hero of German history and emphasized the guilt of England, which in 1712 had weakened Eugene's chances of total victory and diverted the course of European history.Footnote 97
This type of historiography was reflected in literary works as well from the same period. The popular and highly praised biographical novel Prinz Eugen. Ein Mensch und Hundert Jahre Geschichte (1933) by the Austrian Paul Frischauer, who saw Eugene's life through a liberal lens, made way for more Nazi-oriented authors such as Robert Hohlbaum and Mirko Jelušić (Jelusich). They saw the history of the seventeenth century in terms of the 1933–1945 era, directly or indirectly comparing German politics and Adolf Hitler with the prince's role as an effective politician caught between western and eastern forces.Footnote 98
During the war, several novels were written about the warrior-prince, such as those by Karl von Möller or Helmut Rössler.Footnote 99 Rössler gave his hero a sense of belonging to a homeland, a wife and children (which the real prince never had).Footnote 100 The historical approach of Srbik and others, who had tried to arrive at as convincing an interpretation as possible, was simply rewritten in literature. All the failings found in Eugene's biography were redressed to make the hero more lifelike, to strengthen the personification of the warrior-patriot. The specific historiographic influence of this and similar works was miniscule, but it contributed to the myth of Prince Eugene as a German and Austrian hero by continuing to popularize it. The other goal of these novels was similar to Hofmannsthal's: to awaken patriotic feelings, and under the influence of Nazi propaganda, to promote the goals of mobilization and militarization.
Prince Eugene in Historiography after 1945
Eugene failed as a common German-Austrian hero. The German-Austrian image of Eugene did not last, nor did it have a more profound influence on its targeted audience. After World War II, Eugene's old role experienced a rather unexpected comeback. In Wolfgang Liebeneiner's film 1 April 2000, for example, the character of Eugene becomes a symbol for peace and for the importance of an independent Austria. In this film, Eugene is a conqueror in service of Austria, having received an imperial order to conclude a peace agreement in spite of a possible favorable continuation of the war. Naturally, the film is a mixture of satire and Austrian propaganda, at a time (and it was filmed in 1952) when independence seemed distant.
The historian Helmut Oehler, who published during an earlier period, nevertheless anticipated postwar projects not only collecting all the historiographically valuable works on the life of Prince Eugene, but also all the poems, propaganda leaflets, and epics.Footnote 101 He wished to interpret the historiographic and literary creative work about the prince. In his own work, Oehler showed a specific detachment from that of his predecessors. He not only pointed out the importance of songs, epics, and poems as sources for the history of the eighteenth century, but he also succeeded (up to a point) in reconstructing the political background of these writings. Theodor Schieder criticized Oehler's work for being incomplete, saying that it had left many questions unanswered—in particular the question of how the image of Prince Eugene as a warrior had entered German poetry.Footnote 102 Unfortunately, Oehler did not achieve his goal of completely demystifying and deconstructing the Prince Eugene myth. This task was not achievable due to the political situation, the state of academia in wartime Germany, and Oehler's untimely death. His work was limited to the analysis of non-German texts, while another volume dedicated specifically to German texts was never finished.Footnote 103
After the fall of the Third Reich, the interest in Prince Eugene waned. The denazification of Germany and Austria displaced the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century hero, a baroque prince who had been used by historiography as an example of German national spirit and mentality. Still, in 1963, the first volume of Max Braubach's (1899–1975) biography of Eugene appeared. Braubach, a German historian and student of Aloys Schulte, had been addressing the topic of Eugene of Savoy since the 1930s when he had published articles in the Historische Zeitschrift. He was thus already very well acquainted with the historical sources. In his early articles, Braubach had not hesitated to pose a critical question: Can we define Eugene as a German hero? Braubach openly raised the problematic aspects of this argument: Eugene did not know the German language, his servant wrote his German letters, and his relationship with Leibniz would have been no different had the philosopher not been from Germany, and so forth.Footnote 104
Under much more favorable circumstances, between 1963 and 1965, Braubach offered a clearer answer when he published a multivolume biography of the prince. In his mind, Prince Eugene had operated inside the boundaries of Austria and the dynasty, and not for the empire.Footnote 105 In this way, Braubach abandoned Grillparzer's opinion of Eugene as a “hero of Germany in the 18th century.” He was too experienced not to attempt once again what so many before him had attempted: a description of the heroic life from birth to death. He wrote that he had no intention of “turning the Prince into a hero.”Footnote 106 A detailed and exhaustive study, in which almost half of the text is dedicated to Eugene's role as a patron of the arts and his aristocratic worldview, serves as an indicator of the change in historiography. The detailed description of Eugene's last years, which Sybel and Bibl had avoided also represented a new tendency. Braubach wrote the life story of a man, not a god or demigod; he wrote of his failures, as well as his successes.Footnote 107
In Austria not much had been written about Prince Eugene of the Heldenzeitalter for some time. However, the issue did not disappear; Austrian historiography since 1945 had chosen a different path from Germany's. The 300th anniversary of Eugene's birth in 1963 offered more opportunities to approach the subject. In October, exhibitions were held in the Belvedere and the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Erich Zöllner spoke on the radio about “Die Prinz Eugen-Forschung” appealing for scientific research, a documentary was shown on television, and the state leadership led by President Adolf Schärf and Viennese Mayor Franz Jonas celebrated Eugene in a formal ceremony.Footnote 108 A depiction of the two poles of Prince Eugene was planned—the army side in the military museum and the cultural in the Belvedere. This arrangement was openly criticized. The columnist Harald Sterk criticized the imbalance, which in his view had been especially visible in the Belvedere exhibition that had not sufficiently emphasized the prince's patronage of the arts.Footnote 109
In the same year, Janko von Musulin (1916–1978) wrote a brilliant essay on Prince Eugene in which he tried to oppose the radical Bibl history in a similarly radical fashion. He asked: “Does the figure of the hunchback Prince (…) still tell us anything?”Footnote 110 Musulin exaggerated his position, by trying to switch the traditional emphasis from Eugene's war exploits to the prince's cultural activities. Musulin sought to establish a balance with his demystification by pointing to the specific periods when elements of the Eugene myth had been constructed. As a non-historian, he enjoyed the benefit of a freedom to question certain historical experiences—this became an advantage. Still, Musulin posed more questions than he gave answers; his essay deals in part with Austrian identity that Musulin finds to be quite separate from the image of Eugene. He warned that this image of a national hero faded in the public consciousness as new generations were born who shared less and less knowledge of the monarchy.Footnote 111 Again, in this we can recognize the spirit of the times—this time it is the case of postwar Austria, which made little distinction between radical Nazi and patriotic German authors. Such collective deprecation rapidly brought Austrian historiography into a worse position vis-à-vis German historiography. Friedrich Heer wrote in a similar but much less radical fashion than Musulin. He wrote that “[Eugene] remained a foreigner in Vienna, in the state whose unique rise he aided.”Footnote 112
One question in Musulin's article, namely the one about what Eugene had really done for Austria, still left room for new and less radical answers. The turning point in the study of Eugene of Savoy was a quiet affair—it came in an article by Carl Jacob Burckhardt (1891–1974). Burckhardt was a Swiss historian who was close to Austrian historiography of the courtly ideal of French noblemen, the Honnête homme. His article, written before World War II and reprinted in 1971 in Vienna, represented a paradigmatic combination of modern and traditional historiography. Although Burckhardt described Eugene's “knightly values,” which were transferred from the French to the Imperial Court, he still saw that these values were a part of the general seventeenth-century courtly education, and he emphasized them as crucial in Eugene's military innovations.Footnote 113
In time, more biographies of Prince Eugene appeared in England: a more general overview by Nicholas Henderson in 1964 and the biography by Derek McKay in 1977.Footnote 114 These were modern biographies that brought in new interpretations in the portrayal of Eugene. Still, these books tended to follow the magisterial biography by Max Braubach.
A clear sign of progress in research was visible in the 1980s, outside as well as inside Austria. Robert John Weston Evans's book The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700, published in 1979, brilliantly demonstrates how a modern and inventive approach can help depict a topic for which there had been, up to that point, a relatively weak interest in English and American historiography—usually oriented toward the tragic downfall. The topic in point is the very creation of the Habsburg Empire. Although he offered an overview, Evans did not allow political history to dominate his effort to be comprehensive. By emphasizing social and cultural phenomena in Central Europe, the author did not let the personalities dominate his narrative, and in that way he deftly solved a difficult issue: He avoided the Heldenzeitalter by containing his study to the time before the year 1700. Concurrently, a small move forward in a theoretical sense, but a greater one in the deconstruction of myths surrounding Prince Eugene was happening in Austria.
During the 1980s a great number of books on Eugene appeared; the collection of documents and images Prinz Eugen. Ein Leben in Bildern und Dokumenten (1985) published by Gottfried and Henrike Mraz, a collection of articles by German and Austrian historians entitled Prinz Eugen und seine Zeit (1986), or the military history Prinz Eugen: Feldzüge und Heerwesen written by Peter Broucek, Erich Hillbrand, and Fritz Vesely to mention but a few.Footnote 115 On the 250th anniversary of Prince Eugene's death, an exhibition entitled Prinz Eugen und das Barocke Österreich was opened in Lower Austria. As it might be expected, this cultural event was a topic of note in the media. The television accordingly aired the TV-movie Musik für Prinz Eugen, starring Helmut Lohner. The country's political leadership led by President Kirchschläger gathered in the Schlosshof. In the words of Heinz Fischer, who was minister of science at the time, the exhibitions had a goal of documenting the cultural and social terms of life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and uncovering the ways in which Austria organized its renovation after the wars.Footnote 116 These words suggest an undoubtable shift in the focus of research and interest. The collection of papers and the catalogue from 1985/1986 tried to assemble the various definitions of seventeenth century Austrian history, and the role of Prince Eugene, by combining traditional approaches of historians such as Karl Gutkas or Johann Christoph Allmayer-Beck and the younger generation led by Karl Vocelka. The tendency was an even and scholarly exploration of the subject, a well-rounded entity in which there were no special accents. An emphasis was put on the era itself, a need for connecting Eugene to Austria was avoided (although it was tackled in the catalogue), and the rhetoric of the liberating mission in the East also disappeared—this was no longer politically expedient in a country that had seen an influx of 40,000 Turks in the last ten years.Footnote 117
Karl Vocelka, the author of many histories of Austria, in his survey of the history of AustriaFootnote 118 called the time of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the “age of heroes”—das Heldenzeitalter. The approach of R. J. W. Evans, which was unique and difficult to emulate, was also contained by the bounds of social, cultural, and institutional history. Vocelka's solution is more pragmatic; he admits the Heldenzeitalter as such, but he distances himself from romantic historiography by trying to construct a picture that is as complex as possible, one in which he portrays the social and political situation of the baroque era. Vocelka's approach was a fresh one in Austrian historiography. By following the earlier examples of French, British, and American historiographies, he wrote a history of Austrians, distancing himself from a narrow political history of “great men,” but not disregarding them entirely. In this way, Eugene's role remains important, but it is integrated in a wider context. The Heldenzeitalter is still accepted as a name for the most glorious period of Habsburg history in which Prince Eugene figures as, in the words of Michael Hochedlinger, “the military architect of the Heldenzeitalter.”Footnote 119
Concluding Thoughts
The message that comes from this exploration of sources is apparent: The character of Prince Eugene is an inseparable part of Austrian history and of the legacies of Austria, France, Italy, Germany, England, or Croatia, as well as other countries. In this legacy, each of the mentioned national viewpoints is represented in a special way, which should be utilized as an integral element of historiographic creativity. Every national historiography, defined by its own particular characteristics and approaches, will ultimately adapt a phenomenon to its own tradition, thereby creating a unique contribution to scholarly research, opening new questions. The myths that have been fabricated in the previous decades and centuries resurface, come back, or disappear altogether. Modern historiography, deeply rooted in science, tears them apart. Still, it cannot completely control them, seeing that history is not always an object in historiography but also in social memory. Perhaps an intriguing survey of Habsburg sentiment in present-day countries of the former monarchy could shed more light on the question of why and how images of important historical figures present different meanings and experience quite different transformations. Whether it is a negative or positive sentiment, it is not always associated to the conditions prevailing in professional historiography or even in politics. It finds unexpected places for resurfacing, being hidden in literary, poetic, and artistic expression.
Signals of a renewed interest in the prince's life—as exemplified in Czech historiographyFootnote 120—are of a different origin among the Croatian public. The Habsburg legacy seems to appear in times when it is thought to be quite moribund. Prince Eugene has therefore recently appeared as the promoter of winemaking in the Baranja region—according to a television advertizement; the impetus for this was surely not given by historiography, it had regretfully not dealt much with Eugene's Bilje estate. Bilje is today connected to Eugene in a most interesting way through the association Guardians of the tradition of Prince Eugene of Savoy DZMH Bilje founded in 2006, with the basic principle of “guarding and cherishing tradition, excellence and all the values promoted by Eugene of Savoy.”Footnote 121 More recently still, the daily newspaper Večernji list, portrayed Eugene as a “mathematician and genius, a Prince who destroyed the Turks.”Footnote 122 In 2009, Eugene appeared in Jasna Horvat's novel Bizarij, in which the decades and centuries old stories of Eugene were mingled together—the ones of his physical ugliness and vengeful spite that came from his anger at Louis XIV—in this way Croatian literature was introduced to some of the details already known to the Austrian audience. Furthermore, Eugene is brought into connection with Slavonia and Baranja, and with Croats in general, while the author returns to some well-established problems in Croatian historiography.Footnote 123
In contemporary Austria, there still remains a clear perception of Eugene the hero, the liberator of Austria, an image that has in more recent times been extended to—Eugene the “Europeanizer.” It can be demonstrated in two disconnected and very dissimilar examples: In 2010, the second edition of Wolfgang Oppenheimer's book on Prince Eugene was published. As well as being written in a traditional manner, it reintroduced some old ideas about the prince as a unifier of Europe, in the context of the European Union. It is visible from the introduction in which Otto von Habsburg underscores Eugene's actions as “European.”Footnote 124 The other example is less in touch with historiography—during the election campaign of 2010, a leaflet was printed in Vienna, entitled Sagen aus Wien, in which the candidate of the right-wing FPÖ was shown standing beside Prince Eugene. The triumphant general who defeated the Ottomans became a symbol of the party who wanted a “Vienna which was not Istanbul.” That same year, an exhibition was held in “Eugene's” Belvedere in Vienna entitled Prinz Eugen—Feldherr, Philosoph und Kunstfreund marked by scientific discussions that reviewed Eugene's role and time.
It is a curious case of parallel worlds: In one the scholarly historian dispassionately discusses the many faces of Prince Eugene, while the politician exploits only one side of the story, a warped story at that. It can be posited that the unengaged historian has given way to populist hot air. These examples show that, in spite the progress made by modern historiography and the movement toward contextualizing great personalities of history, the use of historical characters for practical goals lives on. Romantic historiography is now unfavorably viewed, and this is seen in contemporary methodological approaches, but the discourse of the romantics continues in public life. The early bond of popular culture and the romantic historiography of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ensured the longevity of some myths, in spite of more modern analyses. Special circumstances and a spirit of the times will always bring forth new sites of inspiration and interpretation.
Things are not as they were in Austria in 1865, 1933, 1936, or even in 1986. Professional historians have no need to generalize, tell stories, or interpret biographies—they are more focused on problems and case studies. On the other hand, citizens of Austria generally know who Eugene was and are aware of all the possible roles, manipulations, and adjustments to which he was submitted. Particularly in Vienna, educated citizens have become more resistant to propaganda. Yet, another kind of propaganda has appeared—alongside the political one that has entrenched itself during the twentieth century (exhibited in the case of the party that explained its viewpoints in a Eugene-comic)—a cultural form of propaganda has been developed. What's more, it is not directed toward Austrians, but toward foreigners, tourists. Prince Eugene has found himself nested in a business with culture, drowned in a sea of commercialized baroque that tourists can find everywhere, back-to-back with Empress Sisi, Francis Joseph, Mozart, or a fin-de-siècle artist—heroes from the past without a particular historical context. This culture-business has integrated all the well-known hallmarks of Austria, highlighting the baroque in particular. In this way the prince has become a commodity, he has entered into a new cycle of propaganda, depiction, and reproduction—again as a symbol—but without his historical context.
As it was stated in a newspaper article from 1936, five melodies were crucial for the secret of Austria: Haydn's anthem, the Radetzkymarsch, Strauss's The Blue Danube waltz, the Deutschmeistermarsch-Regimentsmarsch, and the heroic melody of the Prince Eugene song, Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter. The times have changed and some other melodies may have supplanted the older ones. The enduring bond of modern Austria and the lands of the former Habsburg monarchy, with the monarchy's cultural legacy, ensure the survival of all traditional forms, as the image of Prince Eugene from one of many possible Heldenzeitalter. Therefore, one might paraphrase Janko Musulin and ask—what will the figure of the hunchback prince tell us next?
