[QUOTE=Slartibartfas]
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I dont know, but I guess it maybe very hard to find that book somewhere. Maybe if you find a special trader on old European / Austrian books? But I dont think that so many copies of it remained intact.
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I will try - but I think that if I found one, it would be quite expensive.
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I think FJ differed in that way completely from the Russian Zar that he did not liked pomposity. I mean not personally for him, for the empire or Vienna, Budapest Prague etc yes. But he as person had a very spartanic lifestyle formed by a former military education. That may have made him more sympathetic to his people. I dont know, only a guess. He also allowed a very rudimentary parlamentary live and as you see the Parliament built on the ring by him was a sign that he offered it also a certain place at least architectially. His main fault was that he failed to transform the monarchy in a more just system were at least also the Czechs would have enjoyed certain autonomy.
In fact what I wrote was, that the majority in the Donaumonarchy never wanted to blow it up. Hungarians would have been of course the last that would have wished so, they saw the Habsburgs also as their king. And many other minorities didnt believe that in another state they would have a better live. Anyway, the deadliest mistake for the empire south at the Balkan. To occupy Bosnia was just the wrongest thing they could do. And Serbian nationalists were in the end also those blowing up the whole thing.
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This is always an interesting question for me: did the minorities in the empire want to see the old empire break up? You say that the majority of people did
NOT want it to end. I understand this for most people. The Hungarians had a "priveleged" position, but I would think the Czechs wanted independence? The empire was a stable, relatively prosperous nation, with almost no crime or inflation and low unemployment.
It must have been a terrible shock for all of those people - Austrian, Hungarian, Czech, Italian - after the war. I have read accounts of life in Vienna in 1918-1920 - the starvation - terrible.
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(PS: however as you can see, the monarchy was still stable enough to fight in WWI till the bitter end. All the ethnics on one side together. There was no such thing like later on in the WWII occupied regions with internal resistance etc, at least am I anaware of. It was not before the peace treaty, than the autonomist movements were the only that were accepted as "negotiation" partners. Well I guess this is a very Austrian view of it, hope you dont discuss this issue with any Czech, Slovak, Rumanian, Polish, Slovenian etc   )
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I understand there are different viewpoints.
It is amazing that the empire lasted as long as it did. But World War I destroyed so many things - it could not survive....
The rest of your post later....
