Page - 387 - in Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg - Netzwerker der Kunstwelt

Across the Leitha 387 that “Austria” in this account is indistinguishable from Vienna, it was also axiomatic for Eitelberger and other Liberals that Germans would still play the leading role. All the while Austria could claim to be the central power in Germany, the difficulties of disentangling German from Austrian identity could be passed over ; Austrians could be conceived of merely as one of the distinctive German “tribes”. But after Austria was expelled from German affairs in 1866, the logic of the identification of “Austrian” with “German” began to unravel. German Austrians were now just a particularly privileged group within the Empire as a whole. The weakness of Liberals such as Eitelberger was that they seemed unable to compre- hend the extent to which the ground was shifting beneath their feet. An example of such limitations can be found in a lecture Eitelberger delivered at the Museum of Art and Indus- try on the significance of the Franco-Prussian War.72 Delivered in late October 1870, the war between Prussia and France was still unfolding ; the Prussian army had defeated and captured Napoleon  III at the Battle of Sedan in September, but hostilities were not con- cluded until May of the following year. It might therefore be unfair to judge Eitelberger on his inability to understand the importance of the battle and its aftermath. Neverthe- less, it is clear from the lecture not only that he failed to read the historical significance of events, but that he also seemed not even to have adapted to the changed state of af- fairs since the Battle of Königgrätz of four years earlier. Hence, his lecture strongly aligns Austria with Germany and sees Austrian identity as essentially German, and in addition, rather than seeing some common cause with France, embarks on an extraordinary vilifica- tion of French culture (labelling it as frivolous, concerned with superficial luxury, lacking real Geist).73 He starts, for example, with a celebration of German colonialism ; Germans have colonised the world, and even though they may not have created an overseas empire such as the British, they have played a leading role in the civilising mission of Euro- peans more generally. For “das deutsche Volk […] steht nicht nur in Wissenschaft und Kunst auf dem Höhepunkt des heutigen Lebens, es hat sich auch neben dem englischen Volke am meisten die Grundlagen des ordentlichen bürgerlichen Lebens gewahrt.”74 This stands in contrast to the failures of Romance peoples, particularly the French, to develop a comparable enlightened regime of colonisation. 72 Later published as R. Eitelberger von Edelberg, Der Deutsch-französische Krieg und sein Einfluss auf die Kunstindustrie Österreichs, in : idem, Gesammelte kunsthistorische Schriften, vol.  2 (cit. n.  4), pp.  316–343. 73 Ibid, pp.  324 f. 74 “The German people […] not only stands at the summit of present-day science and art, it has also, alongside the English, done the most to preserve the basis of an orderly civil life.” Ibid, pp.  318 f.