Tensions were already running at dangerous levels when news broke of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. At the same time, room for manoeuvre in the foreign policy arena was very limited as Austria-Hungary had no allies in Europe apart from Germany, making her all the more dependent upon her only partner. When Bosnia-Herzegovina was finally annexed by Austria in 1908, a foreign policy crisis erupted between the Habsburg Empire and Serbia and the Ottoman Empire. In addition, the situation in the Balkans, the ‘powder keg of Europe’, was developing to the disadvantage of Austria-Hungary. It was not state patriotism that was propagated as the expression of citizens’ allegiance to the Monarchy but their loyalty to the monarch. ‘The old gentleman in Schönbrunn’ kept himself out of day-to-day politics and as he aged became a mythical symbolic figure beyond all criticism who held the Monarchy together. The empire and its ruler were overwhelmed by the modern age. The army and the bureaucracy thus became the most important pillars of the Monarchy, which continued to be administered according to antiquated principles without any attempt at basic remediation of its shortcomings. Franz Joseph regarded Franz Ferdinand’s action as a violation of his designated successor’s duty to continue the ruling dynasty.įrom 1893 the governments of the Austrian half of the empire became increasingly unstable, foundering successively on their attempts to solve urgent social problems and coming under sustained pressure from nationalist extremists. One of the main reasons for the difficult relationship between the two men was the heir to the throne’s morganatic marriage to Countess Sophie Chotek, which the archduke had insisted on despite the emperor’s opposition, but at a price: Franz Ferdinand’s offspring were excluded from the status and privileges of belonging to the imperial dynasty. There were also significant differences of opinion, additionally fuelled by personal dislike, between Franz Joseph and his nephew Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who had been chosen as his successor after Rudolf’s suicide. A major critic of the ossification of the political system that had taken place under Franz Joseph was his son Rudolf, whose supported liberal ideas and who was deliberately kept at arm’s length from any political influence.
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