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296 Marsha Morton
appear as abject victims of colonial suffering with a naked child lying prostrate in the
sand (fig. 4). The reference is to the Algerian famine exacerbated by crises in sanitation
and food supply ; blame is directed at the Imperial triumvirate of Prussia, France (Na-
poleon the Third in colonial attire) and Russia. The ironic text states : “Nur durch Aufre-
chthaltung einer starken bewaffneten Macht bleibt der Friede gesichert, und nur wenn
der Friede gesichert ist, können diese dort ruhig und ungestört verhungern.” Eitelberger
would probably have concurred with this critique ; he later denounced the “Triumphwa-
gen des geistlosen Prinzen Wales” on his tour of India in 1875.17
Eurocentrism and military aggression had been vigorously opposed by the Austrian
Orientalist Anton Prokesch von Osten, an acquaintance of both Eitelberger and Müller.
Prokesch had served as Ambassador in Constantinople and Athens and worked for the
Habsburg government in Cairo during the 1820s where he became close friends with,
and biographer of, Mohammad Ali and an expert on Beduin life. An adversary of Eu-
ropean civilizing missions, Prokesch defended parity between the East and West and
argued that “[w]e Westerners find everything reprehensible that is not like us […] [we]
take our village for the world.”18 The man and his accomplishments were greatly ad-
mired by Eitelberger, who knew him as a friend of his father, and by Müller, who was
commissioned in 1875 by the Ministry of Education to paint a portrait of the 80-year-
old diplomat.19 This experience afforded another point of contact between Müller and
Eitelberger, who provided the artist with Prokesch’s address in Graz where he spent
two weeks working in October. When the portrait arrived in Vienna in late November,
Eitelberger lauded it as a genuinely “wahres und treues Lebensbild” that had personal
meaning to him because of the family connection.20 He evidently appropriated it for his
office, because when the elderly Prokesch died a year later, Eitelberger wrote to Müller :
“Der Tod des Prokesch hat mich (wie Sie wohl auch) mit Trauer erfüllt. Ich habe Ihr
information is taken from J. Elderfield, Manet and the Execution of Maximilian (exh. cat. New
York, The Museum of Modern Art), New York 2006, pp.
49 f.
17 Eitelberger to Müller, 28
November 1875, in : Zemen (ed.), Leopold Carl Müller (cit. n.
2), p.
238.
Eitelberger’s comment was elicited by the Prince’s initial offer to Müller to accompany his entourage
as an illustrator. Eitelberger referred to the trip as “die grosse Comödie”.
18 A. Prokesch von Osten, Erinnerungen aus Aegypten und Kleinasien, vol.
3, Vienna 1831, p.
178.
Many of his writings criticizing European policies in the East appeared anonymously in popular
journals. See D. Bertsch, Anton Prokesch von Osten (1795–1876), Munich 2005, p.
20 and p.
619.
19 Eitelberger to Müller, 28
November 1875, in : Zemen (ed.), Leopold Carl Müller (cit. n.
2), p.
238.
According to Eitelberger, his father and Prokesch had spent time together as instructors for military
cadets in 1812.
20 Ibid.
Open Access © 2019 by BÖHLAU VERLAG GMBH & CO.KG, WIEN
Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg
Netzwerker der Kunstwelt
- Titel
- Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg
- Untertitel
- Netzwerker der Kunstwelt
- Autoren
- Julia Rüdiger
- Eva Kernbauer
- Kathrin Pokorny-Nagel
- Raphael Rosenberg
- Patrick Werkner
- Tanja Jenni
- Verlag
- Böhlau Verlag
- Ort
- Wien
- Datum
- 2019
- Sprache
- deutsch
- Lizenz
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-205-20925-6
- Abmessungen
- 17.0 x 24.0 cm
- Seiten
- 562
- Kategorie
- Biographien