The life and fate of Maximilian I, the last emperor of Mexico, has attracted a substantial amount of research since his death in 1867. However, these works either only deal with the last few years of Maximilian’s life, from his candidature for the Mexican throne to his death at the hands of the Mexican liberals, or with other aspects of his life such as his time as governor of Lombardy-Venetia. Thus the main aim of this thesis is to offer a biography of Maximilian, which will not only look at Maximilian’s reign as emperor of Mexico but will also examine the Habsburg aspect of the story. It is thus necessary to look at the extent to which his Habsburg upbringing, his education and his experiences as governor of Lombardy-Venetia shaped his idea of kingship; how his travels and his time in Italy conditioned him to regard the “other” in a certain imperial way; and how all these essentially Habsburg experiences and ideas played a part in his failure and demise in Mexico. This thesis will thus aim to give a rounded picture the life and death of Maximilian I by examining his upbringing, his education, and his experiences in the navy and in Lombardy-Venetia. For without an understanding of these it is impossible to fully comprehend Maximilian’s actions in Mexico.

This thesis takes as its starting point the consensus among scholars and interpreters of Joseph Roth’s work that his writing can be divided into two periods: an early “socialist” phase and a later “monarchist” phase. In opposition to this view, a reading of Roth’s novels is put forward in which his desire to make sense of post-Habsburg Central Europe provides the underlying logic, thus reconciling his early novels with Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft. The first chapter addresses the common contention that the transformation in Roth’s work is the result of a deep identity crisis. An alternative reading of the relevance of Roth’s identity to his work is offered: namely, that Roth’s conviction that identity is multivalent explains his rejection of both nationalism and other “solutions” to the problems of post-war Europe, a sentiment that finds expression in his early novels. The interpretation of these novels, which represent Roth’s early attempts to give literary form to contemporary reality, is the focus of the second chapter of the thesis. In the third chapter Radetzkymarsch is analyzed as a historical novel in the terms first proposed by Georg Lukács, as a novel which facilitates the understanding of the present through the portrayal of the past. Paradoxically, it is the historical form that most effectively captures and illuminates the complex reality of Roth’s contemporary times. The fourth and final chapter demonstrates that Die Kapuzinergruft is not simply an inferior sequel to Radetzkymarsch, a nostalgic evocation of an idealized lost Habsburg world and condemnation of the 1930s present, but rather continues the dialogue between past and present begun in Radetzkymarsch. In this novel, written before and in the immediate aftermath of the Anschluß of Austria to Nazi Germany, it is not Roth but his narrator who takes flight from reality, behaviour that Roth condemns as leading to the repetition of mistakes from the past and the failure to prevent the ultimate political catastrophe.

(in English): Early modern standing army and countryside were connected with dense network of relationships and influences that were reflected in several different layers. The personal link between countryside and army was a very important part of a mutual interaction. This connection resulted from the simple fact that rural subjects constituted a significant part of ranks and files that served, risked their lives and died in the early modern army. The main topic of the diploma thesis is the recruitment within the rural population. The thesis sets two fundamental goals. The first one is the recognition of various methods and techniques that the clerks and patrimonial authorities employed in order to administrate the military issues. The second one is the search for particular people that joined the army, the explanation of their life conditions, family background and social status and the comparison with other subjects which did not choose a career in the army. The research is territorially and chronologically confined to the Třeboň dominion at the beginning of the 18th century. The thesis is based mainly on the original sources stored in the State Regional Archive in Třeboň.

The diploma thesis deals with pedagogical thinking of Jan Valerián Jirsík in the years 1826-1843. The aim of this work is an introduction of Jan Valerián Jirsík´s opinions and ideas which are contained in his literary works. These opinions and ideas are classified to the context of thinking in Jirsík´s time. The work first describes time which Jirsík lived in, what spiritual environmental was around him and how education looked in the Habsburg monarchy. Then the examples of Jirsík´s pedagogical opinions are listed and commented, the examples were chosen from "Škola nedělní" book and "Časopis pro katolické duchovenstvo" magazine.

Au tournant du XIXe siècle, Teplitz est une ville thermale renommée à la frontière de la Bohême du Nord et de la Saxe. Il s’agit aussi de la seigneurie des Clary-Aldringen, une maison noble de la monarchie des Habsbourg élevée au rang princier en 1767. Durant la décennie révolutionnaire, les mobilités familiales entre Vienne, Prague et Teplitz se déroulent en même temps que la circulation d’un nombre croissant de baigneurs, parmi lesquels les fonctionnaires de la monarchie, les vétérans des armées de Prusse, de Saxe et d’Autriche ou les nobles francophones en exil. Les correspondances et les journaux comme ceux de Charles-Joseph de Clary-Aldringen (1777-1831) contiennent de précieuses informations sur la manière dont cette grande famille vécut le temps des révolutions et des restaurations en Europe centrale. Avec les comptabilités et les documents administratifs, les Clary-Aldringen ont également laissé de riches sources iconographiques qui présentent un regard original sur le monde de la « première société » au tournant du XIXe siècle. Leurs archives éclairent une période où le théâtre, la peinture et la littérature de société répondent à une quête identitaire née au moment des émigrations comme celle du prince de Ligne accueilli par sa belle famille à Teplitz en 1794. Cette thèse propose d’examiner le fonctionnement de cette maison princière pour mieux comprendre les transformations de la culture aristocratique qui accompagnent les transformations du pouvoir juridique et politique de la noblesse à l’échelle des seigneuries comme dans le concert des nations du XIXe siècle.Quels sont les enjeux d’une vie construite à Teplitz et dans le monde, alors que les bouleversements de la fin de l’époque moderne entraînent la recomposition de l’Europe des dynasties ? Les aspects éducatifs, les mobilités dans la monarchie et à l’étranger ou l’usage du français et de l’allemand sont des éléments essentiels pour aborder une période de refondation de la légitimité aristocratique avec la disparition du Saint-Empire Romain Germanique et la politique des congrès menée après 1815. Les recherches dans les archives de cette grande famille francophone visent ainsi à interroger la conception aristocratique d’une « Europe des Habsbourg » entre la Révolution française et le Printemps des peuples. / At the turn of the 19th century, Teplitz was a well-known spa at the border between North Bohemia and Saxony. It was also part of the seignorial estates of the Clary-Aldringen family who had been promoted to Princely House in 1767. The first Princes of Clary- Aldringen led an aristocratic way of life in their palaces in Vienna and Prague and in their castle in Teplitz. The letters and diaries written by Charles Joseph of Clary-Aldringen provide essential information to understand how this aristocratic family faced the challenges of the revolutions and restorations in Central Europe. Those were unstable times when political and social powers became questioned while new nations were emerging in central Europe.What is at stake then in their lives when the revolutionary upheavals unbalance the dynastic order in Europe? This research aims to analyse how this princely House managed to face the transformations in aristocratic culture at the end of the Holy Roman Empire and in the first decades of the Austrian empire. Indeed the Clary-Aldringen left a hoard of visual documents also with financial and administrative records, all showing the striking features of the “First Society” in the Habsburg monarchy. The archives lead us back to a period when amateur theatre, paintings and writings were given pride of place. The exceptional variety of the documents found allows us to better apprehend how the aristocrats of the Habsburg monarchy conceived their roles and their legitimacy in Europe during the period of revolutions and just before the Spring of the Peoples. One decisive key lies in the fact that this family kept travelling over Europe after 1792.

This thesis concerns military invalids, deserters and delinquents in the Imperial-Royal Army during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). Its essence lies in the research of documents originated from the activity of the Representations and Chambers, the supreme representative offices in Bohemia and Moravia. The elementary methodological approach comes from a positivist conception, therefore it interprets the information found within the sources as a story (in a certain sense of word) based on the reality which is recorded by them. The theoretical part is enhanced by the outcomes of study of auxiliary books called Elenchs that provide information even about such sources that have not been preserved till today. Thus, I try to answer the question to which extent it is still possible to use them. The main component of the work is formed by three chapters which are dedicated to particular categories of the military persons in an order stated above. Within them, I present the results of the source research that, in the case of the invalids, concern notably their economic security and utilization for the Habsburg Monarchy's war effort. The chapter about the military deserters continues my previous research and amends it (among else) with newly found facts within the sphere of the enlightened-absolutist...

1 Mgr. Hana Králová Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN FOREIGN SERVICE BETWEEN 1868-1918 Abstract Emerging from the reforms of the second half of the 18th century, the body of loyal civil servants gradually transformed itself into an efficient bureaucratic machine, which fully ensured the operation of the multinational Habsburg Monarchy until its disintegration. For many, a position within the civil service went hand in hand with attaining a certain prestige and rank within society, although the financial situation of lower and even mid - ranking civil servants was problematic at best. The foreign service, especially its diplomatic and central administration branch, undoubtedly ranked among the most prestigious parts of the civil service. Candidates, apart from being required to have the necessary level of educational attainment, were subject to a rigorous selection process focusing especially on their language skills. The diplomatic service also maintained its exclusivity by requiring candidates to provide proof of sufficient income, which limited access to candidates from among the wealthy elite, that is especially from among the traditional and new nobility a s well as from among the well-off individuals of bourgeois descent. The research has, however, also shown that...

Iconography of wall paintings in the Straka Palace at Malá Strana in Prague Abstract This thesis "Iconography of wall paintings in the Straka Palace at Malá Strana in Prague" deals with the interpretation of the iconographic program of the decoration of the Straka's of Nedabylice palace on Malá Strana. The work deals primarily with the wall paintings made by Swiss painter Johann Rudolf Bys, ordered by Count Jan Petr Straka of Nedabylice for his Prague residence. Particular attention is paid to the main hall of the palace, which concentrates the most valuable and the most complicated part of the iconography painted decorations. Allegorical and mythological scenes related to historical events and celebrate the Emperor Leopold I. as the victor over the Turks and Louis XIV. The work also describes and interprets the murals and stucco decorations in other salons representative storey of the palace. The interpretation of these paintings is filed under the historical and political context of the time and knowledge of personality of Jan Petr Straka, who was anticipated customer and Inventor of the iconographic program . A separate chapter is devoted to the building and the historical development of the palace until nowadays and also mentions Prague activity of the painter Johann Rudolf Bys. Keywords Petr Jan Straka...

Sometimes the concrete form and skill of a work of art stand in a non-arbitrary or non-contingent relationship with the social circumstances of its facture. I hypothesise that this form and such skill was used by Diego Velázquez for artistically, socially and politically subversive purposes. In particular, I show how Velázquez used painting techniques to undermine the constitutional theory—or fiction—of the reigning monarch as mystically having two bodies: one ʻpublic’, sacred and immortal—even deified—, representing and incarnating the commonwealth, one ʻprivate’ and one mortal, capable of naturalist portraiture. In Hall XII at the Madrid Prado there hangs on your right as you exit a rather small bust portrait of the Iberian Habsburg monarch, Philip IV. It was painted in about 1653, during a pivotal period that saw a general climatic, economic, social, cultural, religious and political crisis and powerful intellectual developments that still characterise Western societies. The picture contains two essentially naturalistic motifs which can be seen from two different vantage points: a bust of a middle-aged man (ʻMotif I’) and, obliquely ʻat a glance’, a skull (ʻMotif II’). Both serve to subvert the constitutional fiction of the King’s Two Bodies: Motif I invites the beholder to approach closer to admire and work out the artist’s already at the time famously ʻloose’ technique, the use of manchas or borrones. The motif will then dissolve and show itself to be artifice which requires the beholder’s cooperation to make it look like the King. It suggests that the Monarchy similarly is an arti-fact that is manu-factured by artists in cooperation with the subjects. Motif II is in effect a vanitas, underlining the mortal and therefore human and transient nature of the monarch, and by implication of the monarchy itself. With the ambition of satisfying the Popperian test of hypothesis falsification, I have proceeded on the basis of the time-hallowed method of the connoisseur of looking closely at works of art in situ and, broadly understood, Wölfflin’s and Panofsky’s theoretical models, together with fundamentals of human psychology and physiology of perception and cognition, assuming an interaction of innate Gestalten and historically and culturally contingent habitus. I interpret my findings in the context of 17C Iberia, including intellectual contributions like that of Pacheco, Carducci, Castiglioni and Gracián. I rely on the rich historical literature on the period and on Philip IV and Velázquez (and their relationship). I make some comparisons between Velázquez, his fellow court-painters Hans Holbein, jr, and Anthony van Dyck, and an artist far from the courts but so close to Velázquez in technique and maybe personal convictions, Frans Hals. My hypothesis relies on three fundamental auxiliary claims—wagered against falsification—to support the claim that Velázquez was a subversive and to give the context for the subversiveness of the portrait of Philip IV: (1) Velázquez did have the practical freedom to produce this subversive royal portrait; (2) it is likely that he used that freedom for this purpose; and (3) he actively manipulated vision and visuality. I at least make likely all three claims. On the basis of Velázquez’s œuvre more generally—especially in his portraits of the marginalised—I show that he had a significant degree of freedom and that he consistently worked towards artistic, social and even political subversion (though not necessarily revolution) using his deep knowledge of vision, visuality and optics—science at the cutting edge in the 17C. As he appears to have suffered from the stain (mancha) of deficient limpieza de sangre, Velázquez’s own person and career—culminating in a knighthood—amounted in itself to social and political subversion. It is appropriate to characterise the technically resourceful Velázquez-the-painter as ingenioso. In fact, as the clever and skilled painter’s hidalguía was almost certainly proved with dissembling and falsified evidence, the mancha of his artisan antecedents—and possibly also of Jewish ancestry—makes him a true ingenioso hidalgo de la mancha. / A veces, la forma y la habilidad concretas de una obra de arte guardan una relación no arbitraria ni contingente con las circunstancias sociales de su realización. Mi hipótesis es que esa forma y esa habilidad fueron utilizadas por Diego Velázquez con fines artísticas, sociales y políticamente subversivos. En particular, muestro cómo Velázquez utilizó las técnicas pictóricas para socavar la teoría —o ficción— constitucional del monarca reinante como poseedor místico de dos cuerpos: uno «público», sagrado e inmortal —incluso divinizado—, que representa y encarna la mancomunidad, otro «privado» y mortal, susceptible de retrato naturalista.   En la sala XII del Museo del Prado de Madrid, a la salida, cuelga a la derecha un retrato de busto bastante pequeño del monarca ibérico de los Austrias, Felipe IV. Fue pintado hacia 1653, durante un periodo crucial en el que se produjo una crisis general climática, económica, social, cultural, religiosa y política, así como una poderosa evolución intelectual que aún caracteriza a las sociedades occidentales. El cuadro contiene dos motivos esencialmente naturalistas que pueden contemplarse desde dos puntos de vista diferentes: el busto de un hombre de mediana edad («Motivo I») y, de forma oblicua «en un vistazo», una calavera («Motivo II»). Ambos sirven para subvertir la ficción constitucional de los Dos Cuerpos del Rey: El Motivo I invita al espectador a acercarse para admirar y elaborar la ya entonces famosa técnica «suelta» del artista, el uso de manchas o borrones. El motivo se disolverá entonces y se mostrará como un artificio que requiere la cooperación del espectador para que se parezca al Rey. Sugiere que la Monarquía también es un arti-ficio fabri-cado por artistas en cooperación con los súbditos. El Motivo II es, en efecto, una vanitas, que subraya la naturaleza mortal y, por tanto, humana y transitoria del monarca y, por implicación, de la propia monarquía.  Con la ambición de satisfacer la prueba popperiana de falsación de hipótesis, he procedido basándome en el método consagrado por el tiempo del conocedor de observar de cerca las obras de arte in situ y, en sentido amplio, en los modelos teóricos de Wölfflin y Panofsky, junto con los fundamentos de la psicología humana y la fisiología de la percepción y la cognición, asumiendo una interacción de Gestalten innatas y habitus históricas y culturalmente contingentes. Interpreto mis hallazgos en el contexto de la Iberia del siglo XVII, incluyendo aportaciones intelectuales como las de Pacheco, Carducho, Castiglioni y Gracián. Me baso en la rica literatura histórica sobre el periodo y sobre Felipe IV y Velázquez (y su relación). Hago algunas comparaciones entre Velázquez, sus pares artistas de la corte Hans Holbein, jr, y Anthony van Dyck, y un artista alejado de la corte pero tan cercano a Velázquez en técnica y quizá en convicciones personales, Frans Hals.   Mi hipótesis se basa en tres afirmaciones auxiliares fundamentales —puestas en contra de la falsificación— para apoyar la afirmación de que Velázquez era un subversivo y para dar el contexto de la subversividad del retrato de Felipe IV: (1) Velázquez tenía la libertad práctica para producir este retrato real subversivo; (2) es probable que utilizara esa libertad para este fin; y (3) manipuló activamente la visión y la visualidad. Yo, al menos, hago probables las tres afirmaciones. Sobre la base de la obra de Velázquez en general —especialmente en sus retratos de marginados— demuestro que tenía un grado significativo de libertad y que trabajó constantemente en pro de la subversión artística, social e incluso política (aunque no necesariamente de la revolución) utilizando sus profundos conocimientos de la visión, la visualidad y la óptica, ciencia de vanguardia en el siglo XVII. Como parece haber sufrido la mancha de sangre carente de limpieza, la persona y la carrera de Velázquez —que culminó con el título de caballero— constituyeron en sí mismas una subversión social y política. Resulta apropiado calificar de ingenioso al pintor Velázquez, técnicamente ingenioso. De hecho, como la hidalguía del hábil e ingenioso pintor se probó casi con toda seguridad con pruebas disimuladas y falsificadas, la mancha de sus antecedentes artesanos —y posiblemente también de ascendencia judía— le convierte en un verdadero ingenioso hidalgo de la mancha.

The thesis Political Programmes of the Czech Representation in the Second Halve of the 19th Century focuses on both programme documents and actual work of Czech political parties, whether more or less institutionalized, between the years 1848 (March Revolution) and 1918 (the downfall of Austria-Hungary). At first it summarizes the historical development in the respective period (Chapter 1), next, it analyses programmes of political parties in three broadly defined topics: 1) Organisation of the empire, question of the Czech State Right (Chapter 2); 2) Constitutionalism, civil rights and role of a citizen (Chapter 3) and 3) National matters (Chapter 4). The attitudes about each of these areas of the following political parties are defined: Bohemian nobility, National Party (till 1874) or Old Czechs (since then), Young Czechs, Social Democrats, Agrarians, Catholic parties, National Socialists, Progress parties and parties of the Radical State Right, Realists and Anarchists. For the conclusion, the author of the thesis attempts to characterise and evaluating the Czech political representation, as well as its importance for the development since 1918.