Page - 291 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

On the War’s Objectives 291 sian territorial concessions were bound to make a peace settlement more difficult. The Hungarian Minister of Education Béla von Jankovich went even further and stated that they should not only forego taking something away from Russia but indeed offer something, namely the Ruthenian territories of East Galicia. At least they would then be rid of this ‘bunch’.700 For the time being, Hungary was satisfied that the issuing of the (first) Polish Proclamation was avoided. It was not only the people in the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen who could breathe a sigh of relief, however ; Foreign Minister Berchtold was for the time being rid of one concern, since he felt anything but com- fortable about ‘conjuring up the ghosts of independence’.701 The last word had by no means been spoken, however, since other considerations were in circulation like ghosts wandering through a room. The most concrete of them had been activated at the end of August 1914 by Baron Leopold von Andrian-Werburg with his position paper on ‘The Question of Austrian Territorial Acquisition in the North-east in the Event of a Successful War of the Central Powers against Russia’.702 It was the same Leopold von Andrian who had made a name for himself as a poet and had provided a considerably more important poet, namely Arthur Schnitzler, with the material for his Leutnant Gustl (Lieutenant Gustl) due to his duelling affair with a baker. With his position paper, which would be followed by others, Leopold von Andrian consciously drew parallels to the famous work of his ancestor Viktor von Andrian-Werburg, Österreich und dessen Zukunft (Austria and its Future), written in 1842/47. Andrian placed above all other considerations the carving out of a ‘basic principle of the Habsburg Monarchy’ as the actual war aim. This was described as follows : the mission and life purpose of the Monarchy is, ‘on the one hand to give the small nations, whose geographical location and numerical weakness make it impossible, the oppor- tunity to lead an independent state existence, the advantages of a free national devel- opment, combined with the security, the power and the possibilities of economic pros- perity, which affiliation with one of the largest empires in Europe guarantee’. Whilst preserving every national character, it would be the task of the Germans in the Dual Monarchy to impart to the other peoples their higher culture as well as to ‘arouse and strengthen in them traditions of communal work, to which the Magyars are particu- larly called, thanks to their special predisposition and their powerful, thousand-year tradition’. After this, not easily intelligible introduction, Andrian went a step further and considered how Austria should behave, especially as a Catholic power. It was pre- cisely the potential victory over France that would force Austria into this role, and the non-German peoples would expect that the Monarchy, with all tolerance internally, would play the role of the dominant Catholic power to the outside world. Yet Andrian went even further : after the war, Austria would be among the group of Great Powers of the first order, in which, aside from the Habsburg Monarchy, there could only be Germany, Great Britain and Russia. In order to achieve this, the Dual