Seite - 617 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Obituary for the Father Figure 617 familiar to him, and the estrangement had intensified further after he had entrusted the day-to-day business of the military to Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This was a  – not entirely voluntary  – gesture of faith, although at the same time it was a calculable risk, since the Emperor still retained the Supreme Command. However, he had now hardly exerted any further influence over the filling of posts, and had also long receded from everyday military life. However, millions of soldiers  – around six million during the months of the war leading to 1916 alone  – swore the oath to Franz Joseph in eleven languages : ‘We swear to God the Almighty a solemn oath, to be loyal and obedient to His Apostolic Majesty, our Most Illustrious Prince and Ruler, Franz Joseph the First, by the Grace of God Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, etc. and Apostolic King of Hungary, also His Sovereign Generals, and all our superiors and those of higher rank […] and in this manner to live and die in honour. So help us God. Amen.’ If the references to God were put to one side, one had to ask whether those who took the oath were really aware of how bound they were to it. Was it already sufficient to act in all conscience ? The sol- diers of the Common (Imperial and Royal) Army did not swear an oath to the consti- tution, the basic law written in 1867, which most at best knew only from hearsay. They exclusively swore a personal oath to their Supreme Commander. However, a passage had been inserted into the formula of the oaths for the Honvéd and Landwehr (the Hungarian and Austrian standing armies, respectively), which also swore the members of these sections of the army to the ‘sanctioned laws of our fatherland’. The bond that they entered into with the Monarch was however the same for all soldiers, and most members of the army should certainly have been aware of the personal commitment that they entered into. Only gradually, and particularly from the moment when ‘he’ no longer lived, were stronger differentiations made. The Monarch was one thing ; the Empire, to which many only felt conditionally bound, was another. The Emperor, to whom the troops swore ‘to bravely and manfully fight, at any place, at any time and on all occasions’, was however no longer to be found among his soldiers during the great, decisive war, aside from the three visits he made to the wounded at brief intervals in September and October 1914, and on 18 July 1915 in the Schönbrunn Palace park, where he watched the ‘Kaiserjäger’ Imperial Tyrolean Rifle Regiment file past. On 24 June 1915, he also made an appearnce to accept a ‘homage to the Emperor’, which took place in celebration of the recapture of Lviv (Lemberg). Otherwise, he was invisible and yet ever-present, since not only did his portrait adorn the walls of offices, barracks, classrooms and numerous apartments, but his face was also to be found on every banknote, every coin and stamp, the lettering of his name decorated countless buildings and objects, every sabre and every cap, whether for the military or for civilian officials. Then there were the monuments, painted por- traits, busts and badges, trinkets and kitsch. Millions of documents bore his signature,