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Praying with the Kaisers
by JOHN ZMIRAK
INSIDECATHOLIC.COM
As I’m writing this column at the tail end of my first trip to Vienna, some of you who’ve read me before might expect a bittersweet love note to the Habsburgs — a tear-stained column that splutters about Blessed Karl and “good Kaiser Franz Josef,” calls this a “pilgrimage” like my 2008 trip to the Vatican, and celebrates the dynasty that for centuries, with almost perfect consistency, upheld the material interests and political teachings of the Church, until by 1914 it was the only important government in the world on which the embattled Pope Pius X could rely for solid support. Then I’d rant for a while about how the Empire was purposely targeted by the messianic maniac Woodrow Wilson, whose Social Gospel was the prototype for the poison that drips today from the White House onto the dome of Notre Dame.
And you would be right. That’s exactly what I plan to say — so dyed-in-the-wool Americanists who regard the whole of the Catholic political past as a dark prelude to the blazing sun that was John Courtenay Murray (or John F. Kennedy) might as well close their eyes for the next 1,500 words — as they have to the past 1,500 years.
But as I bang that kettle drum again, I want to set two scenes, one from a fine and underrated movie, the other from my visit. The powerful historical drama “Sunshine” (1999) stars Ralph Fiennes as three successive members of a prosperous Jewish family in Habsburg Budapest. The film was so ambitious as to try portraying the broad sweep of historical change — and, as a result, it was not especially popular. What historical dramas we moderns tend to like are confined to the tale of a single hero, and how he wreaks vengeance on the villains with English accents who outraged the woman he loved. “Sunshine”, on the other hand, tells the vivid story of the degeneration of European civilization in the course of a mere 40 years. The Sonnenschein family are the witnesses, and the victims, as the creaky multinational monarchy ruled by the tolerant, devoutly Catholic Habsburgs gives way through reckless war to a series of political fanaticisms — all of them driven by some version of Collectivism, which the great Austrian Catholic political philosopher Erik von Kuenhelt-Leddihn calls “the ideology of the Herd.”
From a dynasty that claimed its legitimacy as the representative of divine authority at the apex of a great, interconnected pyramid of Being in which the lowliest Croatian fisherman (like my grandpa) had liberties guaranteed by the same Christian God who legitimated the Kaiser’s throne, Central Europe fell prey to one strain after another of groupthink under arms: From the Red Terror imposed by Hungarian Bolsheviks who loved only members of a given social class, to radical Hungarian nationalists who loved only conformist members of their tribe, to Nazi collaborationists who wouldn’t settle for assimilating Jews but wished to kill them, finally to Stalinist stooges who ended up reviving tribal anti-Semitism. The exhaustion at the film’s end is palpable: In the same amount of time that separates us today from President Lyndon Johnson, the peoples of Central Europe went from the kindly Kaiser Franz Josef through Adolf Hitler to Josef Stalin. Call it Progress.
Apart from a heavily bureaucratic empire that spun its wheels preventing its dozens of ethnic minorities from cleansing each other’s villages, what was lost with the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy? For one thing, we lost the last political link Western Christendom had with the heritage of the Holy Roman Empire. (Its crown stands today in the Imperial Treasury at the Hofburg, and for me it’s a civic relic.) Charlemagne’s co-creation with the pope of his day, that Empire had symbolized a number of principles we could do well remembering today: Principally, the Empire (and the other Christian monarchies that once acknowledged its authority) represented the lay counterpart to the papacy, a tangible sign that the State’s authority came not from mere popular opinion, or the whims of tyrants, but an unchangeable order of Being, rooted in divine revelation and natural law.
The job of protecting the liberty of the Church and enforcing (yes, enforcing) that Law fell not to the clergy but to laymen. The clergy were not a political party or a pressure group — but a separate Estate that often as not served as a counterbalance to the authority of the monarchy. No monarch was absolute under this system, but held his rights in tension with the traditional privileges of nobles, clergy, the citizens of free towns, and serfs who were guaranteed the security of their land. Until the Reformation destroyed the Church’s power to resist the whims of kings — who suddenly had the option of pulling their nation out of communion with the pope — no king would have had the power or authority to rule with anything like the monarchical power of a U.S. president. Of course, no medieval monarch wielded 25-40 percent of his subjects’ wealth, or had the power to draft their children for foreign wars. It took the rise of democratic legal theory, as Hans Herman Hoppe has pointed out, to convince people that the State was really just an extension of themselves: a nice way to coax folks into allowing the State ever increasing dominance over their lives.
A Christian monarchy, whatever its flaws, was at least constrained in its abuses of power by certain fundamental principles of natural and canon law; when these were violated, as often they were, the abuse was clear to all, and the monarchy often suffered. In extreme cases, kings could be deposed. Today, by contrast, priests in Germany receive their salaries from the State, collected in taxes from citizens who check the “Catholic” box. So much for the independence of the clergy.
The House of Austria ruled the last regime in Europe that bound itself by such traditional strictures, which took for granted that its family and social policies must pass muster in the Vatican. By contrast, in the racially segregated America of 1914, eugenicists led by Margaret Sanger were already gearing up to impose mandatory sterilization in a dozen U.S. states (as they would succeed in doing by 1930), while Prohibitionist clergymen and Klansmen (they worked together on this) were getting ready to close all the bars. As historian Richard Gamble has written, in 1914 the United States was the most “progressive” and secular government in the world — and by 1918, it was one of the most conservative. We didn’t shift; the spectrum did.
Dismantled by angry nationalists who set up tiny and often intolerant regimes that couldn’t defend themselves, nearly every inch of Franz-Josef’s realm would fall first into the hands of Adolf Hitler, then those of Josef Stalin. Today, these realms are largely (not wholly) secularized, exhausted perhaps by the enervating and brutal history they have suffered, interested largely in the calm and meaningless comfort offered by modern capitalism, rendered safer and even duller by the buffer of socialist insurance. The peoples who once thrilled to the agonies and ecstasies carved into the stone churches here in Vienna can now barely rouse the energy to reproduce themselves. Make war? Making love seems barely worth the tussle or the nappies. Over in America, we’re equally in love with peace and comfort — although we’ve a slightly higher (market-driven?) tolerance for risk, and hence a higher birthrate. For the moment.
Speaking of children brings me to the most haunting image I will take away from Austria. I spent a whole afternoon exploring the most beautiful Catholic church I have ever seen — including those in Rome — the Steinhof, built by Jugendstil architect Otto Wagner and designed by Kolomon Moser. An exquisite balance of modern, almost Art-Deco elements with the classical traditions of church architecture, it seems to me clear evidence that we could have built reverent modern places of worship, ones that don’t simply ape the past. And we still can. A little too modern for Kaiser Franz, the place was funded, the kindly tour guide told me in broken English, by the Viennese bourgeoisie. (Since my family only recently clawed its way into that social class, I felt a little surge of pride.) Apart from the stunning sanctuary, the most impressive element in the church is the series of stained-glass windows depicting the seven Spiritual and the seven Corporal Works of Mercy — each with a saint who embodied a given work. All this was especially moving given the function of the Steinhof, which served and serves as the chapel of Vienna’s mental hospital. (It wasn’t so easy getting a tour!) The church was made exquisite, the guide explained, intentionally to remind the patients that their society hadn’t abandoned them. Moser does more than Sig Freud can to reconcile God’s ways to man.
We see in the chapel the spirit of Franz Josef’s Austria, the pre-modern mythos that grants man a sacred place in a universe where he was created a little lower than the angels — and an emperor stands only in a different spot, with heavier burdens facing a harsher judgment than his subjects. No wonder Franz Josef slept on a narrow cot in an apartment that wouldn’t pass muster on New York’s Park Avenue, rose at 4 a.m. to work, and granted an audience to any subject who requested it. He knew that he faced a Judge who isn’t impressed by crowns.
As we left the church, I asked the guide about a plaque I’d seen but couldn’t quite ken, and her face grew suddenly solemn. “That is the next part of the tour.” She explained to me and the group the purpose of the Spiegelgrund Memorial. It stands in the part of the hospital once reserved for what we’d call “exceptional children,” those with mental or physical handicaps. While Austria was a Christian monarchy, such children were taught to busy themselves with crafts and educated as widely as their handicaps permitted. The soul of each, as Franz Josef would freely have admitted, was equal to the emperor’s. But in 1939, Austria didn’t have an emperor anymore. It dwelt under the democratically elected, hugely popular leader of a regime that justly called itself “socialist.” The ethos that prevailed was a weird mix of romanticism and cold utilitarian calculation, one which shouldn’t be too unfamiliar to us. It worried about the suffering of lebensunwertes Leben, or “life unworthy of life”–a phrase we might as well revive in our democratic country that aborts 90 percent of Down’s Syndrome children diagnosed in utero. So the Spiegelgrund was transformed from a rehabilitation center to one that specialized in experimentation. As the Holocaust memorial site Nizkor documents:
In Nazi Austria, parents were encouraged to leave their disabled children in the care of people like [Spiegelgrund director] Dr. Heinrich Gross. If the youngsters had been born with defects, wet their beds, or were deemed unsociable, the neurobiologist killed them and removed their brains for examination. …
Children were killed because they stuttered, had a harelip, had eyes too far apart. They died by injection or were left outdoors to freeze or were simply starved.
Dr. Gross saved the children’s brains for “research” (not on stem cells, we must hope). All this, a few hundred feet from the windows depicting the Works of Mercy. Of course, they’d been replaced by the works of Modernity.
We’re much more civilized about this sort of thing nowadays, as the guests at Dr. George Tiller’s secular canonization can testify. In true American fashion, our genocide is libertarian and voluntarist, enacted for profit and covered by insurance.
I will think of the children of the Spiegelgrund tomorrow, as I spend the morning in the Kapuzinkirche, where the Habsburg emperors are buried — and the Fraternity of St. Peter say a daily Latin Mass. As I pray the canon my ancestors prayed and venerate the emperors they revered, I will beg the good Lord for some respite from all the Progress we’ve enjoyed.
Blessed Karl I, ora pro nobis.
[Dr. John Zmirak‘s column appears every week at InsideCatholic.com.]
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An excellent article, both informative and moving in oh so many ways.
But why not just link to it, Mr Cusack? It is to enjoy your thoughts and whimsies that we come, pilgrim like, to your site each day!
Because links are too easily overlooked or ignored, and I wanted to make sure that everyone who frequents this site reads this column of Dr. Zmirak’s.
Thank you, Mr. Cusack. I have long enjoyed your website. My son has Down’s so I appreciate this besides being a Catholic Monarchist.
What is the difference between the Nazis who killed for the “purity of the race” and those that kill today out of “compassion” for quality of life?
Andrew –
Many thanks for linking to this article. It is so true: our “progress” is literally killing our culture.
I know a priest or two who might be convinced to start praying for a restoration of a Christian empire. (Maybe they already do!)
God bless Grand Duke Otto. This article is almost enough to make me a monarchist!
Excellent article. May the Habsburg monarchy rise again!
What would it take to make Fr. Jim go all the way, I wonder…
An interesting piece. One does lament the passing of the Hapsburgs.
That said, a few questions I’d pose to Mr Zmirak:
* The words Kaiser and Czar share a derivation, and with regard to the place of rulers and people and religion, the Russia of the Czars had a similar cosmology to the Christian empire described in the piece. How in the writer’s view did the Czarist version differ and why was the Hapsburg-Holy Roman-Austro-Hungarian preferable?
* As for drafting children for foreign wars, WWI began with Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war, and Austro-Hungarian casualties in that conflict were staggering, with more than 5 million killed or wounded. (The number of casualties from America’s foreign wars is a fraction of that.) You want an argument against conscription for foreign wars, you could point to Austria-Hungary.
* Between 1820 and 1920 some 4 million people emigrated from the Austro-Hungarian empire to the United States. Only Germany, Ireland and Italy had higher figures. If the Austro-Hungarian Empire were so wonderful, why did so many people wish to leave it for America?
I can’t speak for John, but I can at least give my thoughts on the three questions asked.
1) The Hapsburgs would be preferable to the Romanov empire because the Hapsburgs were Catholic and the Romanovs not.
2) As is often the case, conscription is an evil it has taken long to appreciate the true significance of. No less a figure than Cardinal Ottaviani called conscription a maxima iniuria civibus (a “very great injustice to citizens”).
3) A large number of emigrants from the Austo-Hungarian empire were non-Catholics who did not greatly enjoy living under such an obviously Catholic regime, especially when confronted with an option of emigration to a potentially much more lucrative new land. Some were radicals who wanted to live in “the land of the free”.
Others may have left to escape the “Magyarization” attempts of the largely independent Hungarian government. I have a great love for Hungary, its culture, and history, but they undoubtedly played an obstinate part in the Empire, and caused a great deal of difficulties for many of the peoples they ruled.
The trouble was that if the Emperor intervened too heavily in affairs under Hungary’s purview, he risked upsetting the Magyars and provoking civil war. But at the same time, he could hardly ignore injustices committed against his subjects by his subjects. Franz Joseph basically tried to steer a delicate balance for the sake of peace. Franz Ferdinand was known to be in favor of simply removing most of the Hapsburgs’ Slavic lands from the Hungarian kingdom, but whether this would be realistically achievable is a subject of some debate.
As it happens — Sarajevo, the World War, and all that — events intervened, and we shall never know.
I will say nothing of the other questions raised by MCNS, but will forcefully state my opinion that the Romanovs, if indeed not Roman Catholic, were nevertheless members, and often devout ones at that, of the true religion of Christ. Orthodoxy is not heretical but schismatic and possesses not only a true hierarchy and all seven sacraments, but a culture of sanctity and deep mystical Faith which, certainly by the end of the nineteenth century, put most Catholic countries to shame. Furthermore the Russian Emperors (not Czars; that title disappeared with Peter the Great) were autocrats, and ruled without any paltry need to please the Freemasons and other wretches who even Franz Josef was forced occasionally to placate, always to the detriment of both his dynasty and his religion.
Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III, and even poor ineffective Nicholas II the Martyr were rulers worthy of the name, and autocrats over the last integrally Christian Empire in the world.
It is one of the many qualities of the great lost Emperor Franz Ferdinand that he understood that, and would never have countenanced a war of Austria against Russia. A return to the Drei Kaiser Bund was his ideal, and what a world we would have had had his vision become reality.
Quite briefly:
Nobody is perfect. Neither does any land.
But surely Austria-Hungary was a beautiful example how so many nations can indeed peacefully create one Empire.
The remaining constitutional monarchies of modern Europe get plenty of immigration (unfortunately), mostly from republics, so I’m not sure exactly what the high emigration rates from Austria-Hungary prove. In any case, however, I would say that the mentality of those who abandoned Europe for the United States is utterly foreign and incomprehensible to me. Obviously they valued different things than I do. If I were European I would never leave my ancient homeland and its kings, castles, and cathedrals for some artificial republican “land of opportunity” devoid of the kind of heritage I love. How I wish my English, German, and Jewish ancestors had never crossed the Atlantic!
That American crown which Washington rejected – I say we offer it to Mr. Cusack.
Theodore,
The question “Why did so many Europeans emigrate to the United States?” can be answered in one word — Lebensraum.
Many emigrants were peasants who didn’t have enough land to have a decent standard of living. The United States — with its far lower population density — provided them with the economic opportunity they craved. This would have been especially strong in the case of a country like Austria which had no colonial empire.
In fact, Hitler’s plan to conquer and depopulate Slavic Eastern Europe was from his point of view Germany’s (and by extension, Western Europe’s) last chance to escape American domination, by acquiring the natural resources (chiefly farmland, but also the oil of the Caucasus) needed to compete with the United States.
For the Nazis, racism played second fiddle to the ambition of re-establishing Europe as the world’s leading continent — that is why in a war with the white, racist Jim Crow US on one side and non-white Japan on the other, they sided with the non-whites against the whites. You can read more at the blog post “Europe versus Western Civilization” on the Three Hierarchies blog.
the world can thank the anti catholic wilson of usa for world war2 and the rise of the madmen hitler and stalin.
i am sure blessed karl is interceding for europe in heaven.he will i am sure bedeclared st.karl patron saint of europe.blessed karl pray for us.blessed karl pray fur peace in the world.blessed karl pray for europe.
frank meehan.
2butler house.
peppers lane.
maryborough.
co.leix
ireland.
Thankyou for this post..
I would like Dr. John Zmirak to contact me as I ahve tried to contact him myself but couldn’t find any kind of contact address. He could contact me on PopePiusXII1939_1958@hotmail.com