标题: Maria Theresa of Austria [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 2-23-2022 11:44 标题: Maria Theresa of Austria 本帖最后由 choi 于 2-23-2022 11:55 编辑
A Wess Mitchell, Empress on Her Own Terms. Wall Street Journal, Jan 28, 2022 (in the Review section of Saturday). https://www.wsj.com/articles/rev ... empress-11643385756 https://jnews.uk/a-habsburg-to-b ... s-on-maria-theresa/
(book review on two books: (1) Nancy Goldstone, In the Shadow of the Empress; The defiant lives of Maria Theresa, mother of Marie Antoinette, and her daughters. Little, Brown and Co, 2021, and (2) Barbara Stollberg–Rilinger (translated by Robert Savage from German), Maria Theresa; The Habsburg empress in her time. Princeton University Press, 2022)
Note:
(a)
(i) from website of Princeton University Press: Barbara Stollberg–Rilinger "is professor of early modern history at the University of Münster." For the place name, see history of Münster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Münster
("In 793 Charlemagne sent out as missionary the Frisian Liudger (later canonized) to convert the Saxons with whom he had been battling * * * He ]Liudger] built his church and cloister on the right bank of the Aa, on the height called the Horsteberg: it was the monastery ([Lain noun neuter:] 'monasterium') from which Münster derives its name")
With population of a third of a million, City of Münster is in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
(ii) The book is translated from
Maria Theresia; die Kaiserin in ihrer Zeit: eine Biographie (2017).
(iii) German-English dictionary:
* Kaiser (noun masculine; feminine Kaiserin) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kaiser
* The "ihrer" is the possessive that means "her" (such as HER book).
* The German noun feminine Zeit (meaning time) shared the same ancestry with English noun time (from Old English tima).
* Ost (noun masculine): "east" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ost
(b) "On Dec 13, 1740, the Prussian king Frederick II slipped out of a masquerade ball and mounted his horse at the head of 27,000 well-drilled troops. Three days later, he crossed the frontier into neighboring Silesia, northernmost province of the Habsburg Monarchy, then at peace with Prussia. Frederick had chosen his moment wisely. In late October, the emperor Charles VI had died without a male heir, leaving the chaotic jumble of territories that made up the Habsburg patrimony to his 23-year-old daughter, Maria Theresa."
(i)
(A) Frederick the Great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_the_Great
(1712 – 1786; reign May 31, 1740-1786; Frederick II (German: Friedrich II); third son of his father and predecessor Frederick William I of Prussia; was nicknamed "The Old Fritz"/ "almost certainly homosexual" with a wife_
Frederick William I's first two sons died at the age of six months and a year (in that order), respectively.
(B) Take notice that when Frederick the Great (age 28) on "Dec 13, 1740 * * * slipped out of a masquerade ball" to start the First Silesian War, he was only seven months into his kingship (having succeeded to the throne on May 31, 1740).
(C) But why did Frederick the Great "slipped out of a masquerade ball"?
• Chapter 3 A Rendezvous With Glory. https://nevermore.tripod.com/king3.html
In Ursula Grosser Dixon, Fredericus Rex; Prussia's King Frederick the Great. Ursula's History Web (UHW), 1997. https://nevermore.tripod.com/king.html
• parts of paragraphs 1-3 of Chapter 3: "With the beginning of the reign of Frederick II, the enlightenment came to [Protestant] Prussia. Berlin became the center for research and learning, for art and culture. * * * It was his greatest desire to make Prussia respected in the German Reich. He had also long planned to extend the borders of his realm. Nobody had taken Prussia under his grandfather and his father very seriously. During the past few months Frederick had not been idle. During the night of December 12/13, 1740, a masked ball was held at the Berlin Palace. The ambassadors and envoys present had not the slightest suspicion, that two hours after midnight Frederick would join his troops, who were already in position close to the Silesian border. This much coveted province of Silesia belonged to Austria. * * * Frederick made a legal claim on a portion of Silesia. The principality of Jaegerndorf was purchased in 1523 by a younger branch of the Hohenzollern, and in future acquisitions Ratibor and Oppeln were made an inheritance alliance. After the extinction of the Ducal house in 1675, [Catholic] Austria took possession of the inheritance. On December 16, 1740 the Prussian army crossed the border into Silesia. No one could have foreseen, that this first step would lead to three bloody wars"
• Dennis A Trinkle and Svott A Merriman (eds), The European History Highway; A guide to Internet resources. ME Sharpe, Inc (2002), at page 97 https://books.google.com/books?i ... 0Rex%22&f=false
("Fredericus Rex; Prussia's king Frederick the Great http://www.ursulashistoryweb.f2s.com/king.html
("Ursula Grosser Dixon, a novice historian, has compiled a wonderful and very readable site on Frederick the Great and his contribution to German history. She discusses his military campaign, his daily life, his social and political reforms, his 'enlightened despotism,' and his relations with Voltaire. This site is a good place to start understanding the life and times of this important Hohenzollern monarch")
• Fredericus is the Latinized form of Frederick (English) and Friedrich (German). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Fridericus
(ii)
(A) Silesian Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesian_Wars
(German: Schlesische Kriege; "were three wars fought * * * between Prussia (under King Frederick the Great) and Habsburg Austria (under Archduchess Maria Theresa) for control of * * * Silesia (now in south-western Poland). The First (1740–1742) and Second (1744–1745) Silesian Wars formed parts of the wider War of the Austrian Succession [1740-1748], in which Prussia was a member of a coalition seeking territorial gain at Austria's expense. The Third Silesian War (1756–1763) was a theatre of the global Seven Years' War, in which Austria in turn led a coalition of powers aiming to seize Prussian territory"/ section 2 First Silesian War)
introduction: "All three wars are generally considered to have ended in Prussian victories, and the first resulted in Austria's cession of the majority of Silesia to Prussia. Prussia emerged from the Silesian Wars as a new European great power and the leading state of Protestant Germany, while Catholic Austria's defeat by a lesser German power significantly damaged the House of Habsburg's prestige.
(B) German-English dictionary:
* Krieg (noun masculine; plural Kriege): "war" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Krieg
(iii) Silesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesia
(pronunciation; map; section 1 Etymology:
name of a river (now Ślęza [of Polish spelling; derived from a Silesian word meaning 'wet swampy place'/ 78.7 km long; a left tributary of Oder river; flows near Mount Ślęża] and mountain (Mount Ślęża) [table: Elevation 718 m (2,356 ft)
Prominence 468 m (1,535 ft)] in mid-southern Silesia")
introduction: "Though she was expected to cede power to her husband, Emperor Francis I, and her eldest son, Emperor Joseph II [both of Holy Roman Empire; the latter reigned 1765-1790] * * * Maria Theresa was the absolute sovereign who ruled with the counsel of her advisers.
(A) The couple were married in 1736. "Maria Theresa secured his [husband Francis, 'a serial adulterer'] election as Emperor in 1745." en.wikipedia.org for "Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor."
(B) Maria Theresa was the eldest daughter of her father: Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor (whose first-born child, a son, died in infancy). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_VI,_Holy_Roman_Emperor
(C) the given name
Teresa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa
(c) Austria opposite Prussia
(i)
(A) Archduchy of Austria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduchy_of_Austria
(1453–1806; capital Vienna; nucleus of the Habsburg Monarchy; In 1453, Holy Roman Emperor elevated Austria from duchy to archduchy; "From the 15th century onwards, all Holy Roman Emperors but one were Austrian archdukes" -- en.wikipedia.org for "Habsburg Monarchy" is more specific: "From 1438 to 1806 (with the exception of 1742 to 1745), a member [at Austria] of the House of Habsburg was also Holy Roman Emperor")
In 1806 Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, under pressure from Napoleon.
(B) name of Austria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Austria
(section 2 Latin name: "The name 'Austria' is a latinization of German Österreich (that is, the spelling of the name Austria approximates, for the benefit of Latin speakers, the sound of the German name Österreich). This has led to much confusion as German Ost [defined in (a)(ii) above] is 'east,' but Latin auster is 'south.' That is why the name is similar to Australia, which is derived from the Latin Terra Australis ('southern land')" )
• Ost in MODERN German is defined in (a)(iii). The 'er' in Österreich is the legacy of the word's ancestor in Old High German.
• Latin-English dictionary:
* auster (noun masculine): "south" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/auster
(ii) Margraviate of Brandenburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margraviate_of_Brandenburg
(1157–1806; "Although the [Brandenburg] electors' highest title was 'King in/of Prussia,' their power base remained in Brandenburg and its capital Berlin"/ table: Brandenburg-Prussia [formed in] 1618, Kingdom of Prussia 1701)
(A) Brandenburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg
is a federal state in Germany surrounding Berlin.
(B)
• margravate (n; also margraviate (with same pronunciation) ): "the territory ruled by a margrave" https://www.lexico.com/definition/margravate
• margrave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrave
(section 1 History: etymology)
作者: choi 时间: 2-23-2022 11:44
-----------------text of book review
------------------------------
On Dec. 13, 1740, the Prussian king Frederick II slipped out of a masquerade ball and mounted his horse at the head of 27,000 well-drilled troops. Three days later, he crossed the frontier into neighboring Silesia, northernmost province of the Habsburg Monarchy, then at peace with Prussia.
Frederick had chosen his moment wisely. In late October, the emperor Charles VI had died without a male heir, leaving the chaotic jumble of territories that made up the Habsburg patrimony to his 23-year-old daughter, Maria Theresa. The realm that she inherited was in a pitiable state: its army demoralized following a recent defeat by the Turks; its treasury depleted by Charles’s long campaign of bribery to secure the sanction of Europe’s other monarchs for his daughter’s inheritance.
The Habsburg dynasty’s first and only female ruler, Maria Theresa ascended the throne under a cloud of doubts about her competence and legitimacy. Young, pretty and pregnant, she was inexperienced in statecraft or war. Smelling blood, France, Spain and Bavaria joined in Frederick’s conquest, each hoping to carve a lump from the flailing empire. Beset on all sides, the young Archduchess now found herself in a desperate fight for survival — as she would later write, “without money, without credit, without army. . . without any counsel. ” Many of her ministers began to prepare for what they assumed would be Austria’s inevitable defeat and partition at the hands of the invaders. The House of Habsburg, it seemed, had reached the end of its rope.
But Frederick had underestimated the young queen. Maria Theresa rallied her subjects, outwitted her foes and fought Frederick to a standstill. In the years that followed, she overhauled Austria’s antiquated systems of finance and administration, modernized its army and revolutionized its foreign policy. When Frederick attacked again in 1756, the tables were turned against him. Altogether, Maria Theresa would fight “the monster” (as she called Frederick) for more than a third of her 40-year reign. Along the way, she bore 16 children, 10 of whom reached adulthood and four of whom would go on to become European monarchs.
By any measure, Maria Theresa must be judged among the most successful Habsburg monarchs and most remarkable leaders of the 18th century. Yet modern historians have had little to say about her. She was too conservative to ever appeal to feminist historians. She lacked the offensive warfighting prowess that has given Frederick II a cultlike following among American military historians. And she lacked the adventurous sex life that made Russia’s Catherine the Great a favorite for television miniseries producers. The last comprehensive history of the empress, Alfred von Arneth’s 10-volume “Geschichte Maria Theresas,” was written a century and a half ago.
An effort to pull Maria Theresa out of the shadows is overdue, and two very different historians have taken on the task with two new and very different biographies.
Popular historian Nancy Goldstone’s “In the Shadow of the Empress” is a really a quartet of biographies, encompassing the lives of Maria Theresa and three of her daughters — Maria Christina, Maria Carolina and Maria Antonia (later Marie Antoinette). Powerful queens are Ms. Goldstone’s métier; she has previously produced books on Joan of Arc, Catherine de ‘Medici, the Provençal sisters and Mary Queen of Scots.
The book is elegantly written, in a brisk style that plays to Ms. Goldstone’s strengths in portraiture and the theatrical set-piece. The author deftly interweaves the ups and downs of Maria Theresa’s running contest with Frederick with the vicissitudes of her life as Europe’s most prolific procreator. To bear 16 children is surely a stupendous feat in any era; to do so as a head of state, often during wartime and in the span of 20 years, staggers the imagination. Yet these trials did not diminish Maria Theresa’s stamina as a reformer, a vocation she pursued with astonishing vigor in virtually every corner of Habsburg government, from administration and finance, to agriculture and the army.
Ms. Goldstone gives us a lively account of the empress’s favorite daughter, Maria Christina (“Mimi”), whose passion for the seductively charming Isabella of Parma (Mimi’s sister-in-law) takes some of the starch out of the Habsburg facade. (“I burn for you,” one letter reads; another, “I kiss everything that you let me kiss.”) She resurrects the similarly obscure Maria Carolina, who shrewdly usurped her husband, the feckless and juvenile King of Naples. And she avoids a stale recital of the oft-told tale of Marie Antoinette, without ever fully explaining how Maria Theresa’s youngest daughter left home with such a noticeably lower level of self-discipline and sense of duty than her elder sisters.
Four life stories in one cover is a heavy lift for even the most talented biographer. Ms. Goldstone could have done a better job tying the proliferating plotlines back to the book’s implied central theme — the galvanizing figure of Maria Theresa. The author’s evocative prose occasionally borders on camp (somehow calling the future Holy Roman Emperor Francis Stephen of Lorraine a “high school heartthrob” does not fit). And the maps are a mess, giving the Habsburg Monarchy a name (“Austria-Hungary”) that would not exist for another century and boundaries that it had lost before the date on the map. But these shortcomings are offset by Ms. Goldstone’s rich storytelling and the humane and balanced portraits she provides of her subjects.
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Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger’s “Maria Theresa” is, at more than 1,000 pages, a monumental feat of scholarship that represents the first comprehensive reappraisal of the empress’ life and legacy since the mid-19th century. Where Ms. Goldstone aims to popularize Maria Theresa, Ms. Stollberg-Rilinger, an academic historian at the University of Münster, wants to “rescue” her from the appraisals of earlier historians like Arneth, who saw in the empress’s piety, patriotism and family values the makings of a mother figure for the Austrian nation.
Ms. Stollberg-Rilinger scrutinizes every conceivable aspect of the empress’s life and reign. The exhaustive research and scholarly nature of the book does not come at the expense of readability. Ms. Stollberg-Rilinger excels at both detail and grand scale, and translator Robert Savage never lets her down. Her description of the Habsburg Monarchy’s complex machinery, her analysis of the arcane workings of the Holy Roman Empire, and her exposition of the family’s marriage strategies are all masterpieces in miniature. Her accounts of Maria Theresa’s showdowns with insubordinate courtiers have all the tension of a corporate boardroom drama. Students of executive leadership might learn a lot from Maria Theresa’s method of empowering high-octane personalities to carry out difficult reforms against the resistance of large bureaucracies.
As always, human details capture the imagination. We learn that the searingly self-honest empress called herself “Theresa the fat”; that she was immune to flattery and refused to allow disloyal officials to kiss her ring; that she shamelessly spoiled Mimi while smothering and hectoring her other children; and that she launched a “chastity commission” in a vain attempt to stamp out infidelity among the nobility, which her husband, the amiable but idle Francis Stephen, elevated to a high art form in his hunting lodges.
Ms. Stollberg-Rilinger strives to avoid anachronisms; one benefit is that the reader is largely spared the overlay of identity politics that has become a mainstay of modern academia. She does not make gender the main focus of the text — an approach that Maria Theresa, who styled herself “king” and once considered challenging Frederick to a duel, would in any event have rejected.
Yet the author sometimes seems more interested in fighting historiographical battles than understanding Maria Theresa. The modern biographer, she says, must avoid “direct empathy” with a historical personality and abjure the search for “timelessly valid” truths about the past. Her text can thus sometimes seem coldly forensic or, worse, myopic. Ms. Stollberg-Rilinger is so preoccupied with debunking the “classic hero narrative” of Maria Theresa’s reign that she sometimes fails to acknowledge characteristics of heroism in her subject.
Many of the author’s judgments also carry a strong whiff of present sensibilities. In analyzing the basis for Maria Theresa’s bond with her subjects, she offers a starkly materialist interpretation straight out of the mid-20th-century, overlooking the crucial role of Catholicism. She criticizes Maria Theresa for “refusal[ing] to plead her case before the self-appointed tribunal of a critically informed public, ”without explaining what exactly that would have meant in 18th-century Austria — or reflecting on the obvious irony that such a“ tribunal ”eventually cost Maria Theresa’s daughter Marie Antoinette her head.
Ms. Stollberg-Rilinger’s real beef is with Maria Theresa’s contempt for the Enlightenment, which the old empress saw as the dangerous theorizing of “fashionable philosophers.” This German academic finds it distressing that in an emerging age of rationality, Maria Theresa would adhere to a “premodern virtue ethics” grounded in “piety, steadfastness and vigor, wisdom and moderation, benevolence and munificence.” The image she leaves us with is of an antique empress clinging to outdated beliefs, who failed in her most important life missions.
Readers are likely to find this bleak assessment unconvincing and indeed unsupported by Ms. Stollberg-Rilinger’s own, superbly researched text. The truth is, whether in her rejection of predatory warfare or fidelity to her spouse or circumspection in child-rearing, Maria Theresa was exceptional for her class and time. That she saved her empire and reared a generation of reform-minded monarchs while displaying a personal integrity that was alien to supposedly more Enlightened contemporaries like Frederick and Catherine makes her story more remarkable, not less.
Acknowledging this does not require us to be blind to Maria Theresa’s faults. But it does require us to recognize that what made her remarkable was adherence to virtues that, however outdated they may seem today, are in fact “timelessly valid.” And seeing that requires a humility that is not in abundant supply in the 21st century.
—Mr. Mitchell is a principal at the Marathon Initiative and the author of “The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire.”