“A relaxed imperial Catholic integralism, mit Schlag”

Over at Theopolis, Susannah Black Roberts has a nice reflection on the Austrian empire, attempting to “read” the cityscapes of Vienna and other cities once under Habsburg rule—she mentions the peculiar feel that cities such as Trieste, and Ljubljana and Varaždin and Zagreb have. (Trieste seems to me a slightly special case, because of the  palpable atmosphere of inauthenticity, phoniness, unreality, and false consciousness that suffuses it). But I think she is right about the political ideal which she finds embodied in the old architecture of such places— “a relaxed imperial Catholic integralism, mit Schlag.” An ideal in which the many nations remain as nations while being bound into a more encompassing, more catholic unity. She is of course aware of the many imperfections of old Austria, but I think she is right to argue that the truth of things is in things at their best:

Of course it was not perfect. Of course there is the glow of nostalgia, that instagram filter of history, which colors things. But we have to ask ourselves: What is the good version of a thing? The good version of a thing, and not its corruption, is the reality of that thing. This addiction to the “dark underside” being more real is absurd. Freud perhaps would say that the truth of the Habsburgs was in Crownprince Rudolf’s adultery and suicide, or Sisi’s anorexia and hysteria, or Sophie’s snubbing by her husband’s family. But that is not so. The truth of the Habsburgs is in their myth: in the idea of an empire built not by war but by the marriages of a family, built on faith in Christ. Franz Josef washing the feet of twelve paupers, every Maundy Thursday. The fact that, on the death of each emperor, when the corpse was brought to the Capuchin crypt that held all the family tombs, the Grand Chamberlain would knock.A friar would ask, “Who is it?” The Chamberlain, speaking on behalf of the corpse, would say “I am Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria, of Illyria, and King of Jerusalem, Archduke of Austria, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow, Duke of Lorraine, Margrave of Moravia, Duke of Upper Silesia, Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, Prince of Conde-Hapsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, in Goritz and Gradisca, Prince of Trent and Brixen, Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and Istria, Earl of Hohenembs of Feldkirch of Brigance, in Sonnenberg, Lord of Trieste, of Cattaro and Marche, Great Voivode of Serbia,” and so on.The door would not open. The Capuchin would reply, “I do not know you.”Again, the Chamberlain would knock, and again the friar would ask, “Who is there?”“I am Franz Joseph, His Majesty the Emperor and the King.”The door stayed closed. “I do not know you.”A third knock.“Who’s there?”“I am Franz Joseph, a poor mortal, and a sinner.” And the door would open.That is the truth of the Empire.

The whole piece is worth reading.