As the success of “Downton Abbey” has shown us, knowing more about the lives of the nobility is just good fun. This is true in academia as well, where in the last twenty years a great deal of new research has reinvigorated a topic once thought quite passé. Konstantinos Raptis is interested in continuities and ruptures in the lives of the ancient noble family of the Herrachs, who owned land in Bohemia, Moravia, Upper and Lower Austria, and Hungary from the 1880s through World War II. He delves into their financial and political dealings, self-understandings, daily routines, lifestyles, travels, and travails, making them very real to a modern reader. The secret to his success is wonderful source work: he has used financial records, wills, diaries, countless letters, interviews, and above all the excellent archival materials that exist for the years 1919‒45. The result is a family that speaks to us across the years as dynamic, powerful, yet human.

Raptis organizes the chronological story loosely around three heads of the Herrach family: Johann Nepomuk (1828‒1909), who supported Czech economic and educational development and was president of a Czech commercial bank; Otto (1863‒1935), who was a Bohemian Landtag representative before World War I and was very active in aid during the war; and Johann (1904‒45), who steered the family through the changes of the late interwar years. These men anchor the family and direct it, quite literally, as it grows, morphs, prospers, and responds to events. Yet the book is structured thematically, around kinds of activities or ways of knowing the family: family roles, what they owned and what they produced, palaces and places, daily life, religion and philanthropy, politics. Along these two axes, time and theme, Raptis moves the reader through a complex look at the world inhabited and shaped by the Herrachs.

What does it mean to be noble? In an interview with Stephanie Herrach late in her life, Raptis gets this definition of noblesse oblige: staying true to the Catholic faith, with particular love for fatherland, being bound to the people with whom you live, and keeping harmony in the family (251). We certainly see the Herrachs achieving this throughout the study. Their endless attendance at Mass and their impressive philanthropy, their unwavering loyalty to Francis Joseph, their close ties with other noble families, and their even closer ties among themselves are secrets to their success. The surprising takeaway from the study is the remarkable amount of continuity that can be found (with the exception of the very dead Francis Joseph) all the way into the 1940s. Times change, borders change, regimes change, but their behavior and self-understanding is unmodified. No, they might not take as many cures in Abbazia after World War I, and perhaps they might have a smidge more contact with the middle classes as World War II approaches, but even these modifications are negotiable.

The most enjoyable reading is, of course, the letters (more than two thousand were researched) and the diaries. These people were proud, rich, prudent, and ultimately fallible, which means that although their money lasts, their challenges are not always met. An early firstborn is described as “Geisteskrank”; therefore, another heir must take the reins of the family. Marriages, strictly arranged between other noble families, are not always happy. War divides landholdings into separate countries. Because Raptis allows us to hear the family's actual voices, we care. From the legal document transferring power from one Pater familias to another, down to the diary of a child who is clearly bored with his winter routine, we are guided into the written word the Herrachs left behind. Photographs of the family members and their impressive palaces give us even more on which to hold. Even the drier subjects, such as the supplied tables of employees at the sugar or glassware factory, or the chapter that shows the family navigating interwar land restrictions and land redistributions, are made lively through the judicious interspersing of letters from characters with which we are familiar.

Raptis ends with a thoughtful and rich Nachwort that truly tries to summarize his findings. He explores the economic, sociocultural, and symbolic capital that the family both possessed and shared. He stresses its “apartness” from the world outside, despite its impressive history of service to society, as well as the deep rupture World War I ultimately represented for all nobility. He also includes a number of tables and documents at the end of the book that I suspect he wanted to fit into the body of the text but couldn't make “flow” (my favorite table in the book is the one that charts where the family vacationed/took cures and how often). It is almost as if he doesn't want to leave any stone unturned or underanalyzed. Readers will be sympathetic—they, too, will be loath to leave this compelling family behind.