The Habsburg Way: Seven Rules for Turbulent Times
by Eduard Habsburg, Archduke of Austria
Sophia Institute Press, 2023, 176 pages, $19.95
I am of the opinion that if the Allies at the peace table at Versailles had not imagined that the sweeping away of long-established dynasties was a form of progress, and if they had allowed a Hohenzollern, a Wittelsbach, and a Habsburg to return to their thrones, there would have been no Hitler.
–Winston Churchill
In American discourse today, the word “empire” inevitably carries negative connotations. For some it conjures up a vision of colonists struggling to free themselves from British rule, even as others may think of Nero’s persecution of early Christians. Still others may remember Ronald Reagan’s censure of the Soviets’ “Evil Empire,” while those less historically-literate will have at least seen Star Wars. Empire is what the bad guys do. Right?
Well, if we look at the Latin root word imperium (authority) we might at least pause before conceding such a sweeping judgment. The fact that there have been bad empires does not mean that the “bad” in “bad empire” is redundant, any more than the existence of bad governments means that we should all embrace anarchy. Nor need we espouse imperialism ourselves in order to find something positive in the legacy of the British Empire or Augustan Rome. After all, the former did stamp out the diabolical Thug cult of India, and the latter played a key role in the dissemination of Greek philosophy and of the Gospel.
At the very least, we can concede that one empire may serve to counter another. As related in The Habsburg Way, the Ottoman Empire’s attempt to bring Europe under the sway of the Koran was thwarted largely through the savvy diplomacy and strategy of Habsburg emperor Leopold I:
Leopold knew what he had to do to defend his realm. War was declared on the empire on August 6, 1682, but the Turks could not begin their campaign that late in the year without the risk that winter would begin before their anticipated siege of Vienna had succeeded. The Holy Roman Empire had a year to prepare, and Leopold went to work. He formed an alliance with Venice and the Pope, which was only to be expected. But in a master stroke, he arranged the Treaty of Warsaw of 1683 in which Poland and Austria mutually promised to defend each other, if the Turks attacked either Warsaw or Vienna.
The result of Leopold’s maneuvering was the extraordinary confrontation known as the Siege of Vienna, where Poland’s heroic king Jan Sobieski led a combined force of Polish and Holy Roman Imperial cavalry straight through Ottoman lines. Europe remained free and Christian.
And as author Eduard Habsburg points out, this was only one of many instances whereby the imperial house of Austria played a salutary role in European politics. At the 1809 Battle of Aspern, the Archduke Charles personally headed the assault that broke the French formation, thereby proving to the world that Napoleon Bonaparte was not an invincible superman; during the fratricidal First World War, Emperor Karl I quietly promoted peace efforts, seeking all the while to mitigate the conflict’s totalitarian ferocity; during World War II, members of the imperial family established (and served in) the Free Austria Battalion, a resistance group fighting to undo Nazi Germany’s annexation of their country.
This Habsburg legacy may still prove beneficial to Western life, argues Eduard, if enough people are open to its lessons. One such lesson involves the Habsburg reliance upon subsidiarity, the principle that decrees that issues be resolved at the most local level possible. Only through subsidiarity could such a large, multiethnic regime as the Holy Roman Empire ever have been managed, he explains, and this provides a lesson for Americans today. “Cities should never take over roles that families can manage; states should not do what counties, towns, or families can do; nations should not preempt the role of states.”
We must resist the “strong desire to centralize lawmaking and policymaking at higher and higher organizational levels,” whether the centralization comes from Washington, D.C., or European Union headquarters. “Human beings are made for local interaction, in families, towns, and countries with common cultures. That’s just the way we are made.” Here it so happens that the imperial Austrian is on the very same page as some of America’s foremost icons, such as Founding Father Thomas Jefferson and Anti-Federalist Patrick Henry, both of whom explicitly yearned for America to become a highly decentralized federation rather than a consolidated regime.
Of course, the ship of centralization seems to have long since sailed, and the ordinary twenty-first century U.S. citizen probably cannot do much now to change that. As individuals, however, we can at least stop thinking and acting as if our hope lies in distant celebrities or politicians. Instead of being news junkies, mere spectators of the world crisis du jour, we might save the better part of our time and energy for our immediate and extended families, neighborhoods, churches, and local communities.
On the world stage the Habsburgs themselves retain only a tiny fraction of their former clout, as the prospects of a Habsburg restoration have become dimmer and dimmer in the years since World War II. This explains why The Habsburg Way is written as it is. Although there are many details that might lead the American reader to moderate his natural distaste for monarchy, the book’s author aims neither to convert anyone to monarchism nor to propagate some grand ideology of imperial government. If anything, The Habsburg Way is a historically informed self-help book, one whereby modern American parents can take cues from some of Europe’s greatest patriarchs and matriarchs. An imperial family is still a family, after all, and by any empirical standard the Habsburg dynasty is one of the most successful in history. Having lasted as an institution for almost eight hundred years, its historical and cultural legacy is indisputable, and it counts among its members some very striking men and women of faith, from the Venerable Archduchess Magdalena to the Emperor Karl, beatified by Pope John Paul II.
In one passage Eduard sets forth his case as to why American Christians of all confessions might take an interest in his kin, especially now:
The Habsburgs can indeed be seen as a model of a large, successful family, blessed with many marriages and lots of children. Historically, the family experienced few assassinations and made no great conquests through war, killing, or cruel intrigues. But more than this, in a time where every Christian value is being increasingly driven out of public life and politics, the Habsburgs stand for timeless things like family, faith, the peaceful cohabitation of nations and languages, and the peaceful coexistence of diverse races and cultures. For all their faults, the Habsburg rulers appear to have cared for their subjects quite well.
In other words, the Habsburgs are of interest to anyone who cares about the relationships between parents and children, about identity, about responsibility, or about God. The Habsburgs took pains to ensure that each new generation was enculturated via the Habsburg tradition—for no one can take for granted that those born into a family automatically know what membership in said family means. True membership is only learned through years of commitment, discipline, and prayer. It could be that the Habsburg way represents a possible preventative with respect to our era’s personal crises, obsessions, and sexual experimentation—all of which partly stem from the existential void left by an absence of a sense of roots.
Thus the Habsburg way implies that he who is born privileged needs to learn gratitude toward his forefathers, as well as how to make the most of his material, cultural, and spiritual patrimony. For him to do so, he must be inculcated through the Socratic maxim γνῶθι σαυτόν (know thyself), which has very practical implications:
This maxim applies to individuals and families about themselves. Indeed, the entire Habsburg family has always been keenly aware of its deep roots, what shaped it, and where it came from. Although mostly the Habsburgs were a deeply traditional people, that didn’t keep them from innovating, when necessary. We are all swept, whether we like it or not, into the future, every moment of our lives. When you “know yourself,” you can carry yourself into the future without losing yourself along the way.
As if to punctuate the claim that the Habsburgs are capable of adapting to changing times, the foreword to The Habsburg Way comes from none other than the pugnacious Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary. As a Protestant who is also a nationalist, Orban is certainly not the first person we would expect to introduce a work revolving around the former rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. Yet Orban’s experience as an anti-communist dissident during the Cold War has taught him the importance of seeking common ground where it is to be found. And there are old ties between his people and the Habsburgs: As he says himself, “There were indeed times when, without the other, the Hungarians and the Habsburgs would have been swallowed up by history,” such as when the king of Hungary helped save the throne of Rudolf von Habsburg during the Middle Ages.
True, in the modern era conflicts did on occasion pit Hungarian nationalism against Habsburg imperial politics, and tragedies ensued. Yet one bright side of twenty-first-century tribulations is that they can prompt surprising reconciliations. “We Hungarians have indeed become independent,” concludes Orban, “while the Habsburgs of today no longer labor beneath the burden of governing an empire. So now there is nothing to stop us from learning from each other, acknowledging our respective traits, or recognizing the impression our own history made on the other…. We are on the same side again, and we are going into battle together again, as we did eight hundred years ago.”
The unraveling of the Habsburg domain did not mean the end of their story. Their ideals and symbols live on, even into this age of Covid, globalization, and radical politics; they have even renewed their ancient friendship with the Hungarian people. As our own American society sometimes seems to teeter on the brink of dissolution, the enduring nobility of the Habsburgs is an encouraging lesson indeed.
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