Page - 618 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

618 The Death of the Old Emperor railways, roads, squares, bridges and so on were named after him. The list could go on almost endlessly. Thus, purely by dint of his long period of reign, he had already be- come the symbol and nominal bearer of a power that threatened to slip from his grasp, but which he tenaciously and doggedly attempted to retain. Franz Joseph created the impression of being a spider right in the centre of the huge web that he regarded as his  – entirely personal  – kingdom, and by all means not only in the figurative sense. More than in the political sphere, perhaps, he had repeatedly made his unbending stance and the priority he gave to tradition clear when it came to the imperial family, his ‘dynasty’. Anyone who was not prepared to bow to convention and take the place assigned to them would be thrown out, and the next person would move up to fill the empty space. Naturally, Franz Joseph had constantly to consider the issue of who would follow him. And he had no love for any of his heirs presumptive, be it for his brother Ferdinand Max, even for his son Rudolf, and certainly not for his nephew, Franz Fer- dinand. Rudolf had fought to win his father’s love  – and had been disappointed. Franz Ferdinand could hardly wait to follow his uncle, and returned the cool relationship through and through. Finally, Franz Ferdinand had a portrait painted that already de- picted him as Emperor. The picture would never fulfil its purpose. After the death of his son, Franz Joseph had hesitated for years before officially appointing Franz Ferdinand as heir to the throne, and only after the death of Archduke Karl Ludwig in 1896, who would theoretically have been next in line as successor to the ruling office, did Franz Joseph do what had already been expected of him for a long time : he reconciled him- self with the next person in the rank order and kept him at arm’s length. Then he too was dead, and Archduke Karl Franz Josef moved up in the line of succession. Franz Joseph bowed to necessity and accepted him as successor right on the day after the assassination. He even assigned him a suite of rooms at Schönbrunn Palace, although he then did his utmost to keep the young man from being continuously in the vicinity. He ordered that he undergo military training. However, what the Emperor had not reckoned with was the manner in which the new heir to the throne so skilfully treated him. In contrast to his three predecessors, of whom at least two had made no secret of their desire to succeed the Monarch, and the sooner the better, Archduke Karl did nothing of the kind. On the day of the assassination in Sarajevo, Franz Joseph was in Bad Ischl. On the morning of the following day, he travelled to Vienna in the royal train. On 30 June, the new heir to the throne had the opportunity for the first time to talk to the Monarch  – not alone, but in the presence of the Imperial Lord Chamberlain, Count Alfred Mon- tenuovo. No further plans had been made however, since clearly, no-one considered the possibility that Archduke Karl Franz Josef might also fall victim to an accident, an assassination or illness. The next in line to the throne  – aside from older archdukes such as the Emperor’s brother, Ludwig Viktor (who was out of the question)  – were Arch-