Metternich: Strategist and Visionary

A compelling new biography that recasts crucial European statesman of the primary half of the nineteenth century, well-known for his alleged archconservatism, as a buddy of realpolitik and reform, pursuing worldwide peace.

Metternich has a fame because the epitome of reactionary conservatism. Historians deal with him because the archenemy of progress, a ruthless aristocrat who used his energy because the dominant European statesman of the primary half of the nineteenth century to stifle liberalism, suppress nationwide independence, and oppose the goals of social change that impressed the revolutionaries of 1848. Wolfram Siemann paints a essentially new picture of the person who formed Europe for over 4 many years. He reveals Metternich as extra trendy and his profession far more forward-looking than we’ve got ever acknowledged.

Clemens von Metternich emerged from the horrors of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Siemann exhibits, dedicated above all to the preservation of peace. That usually required him, because the Austrian Empire’s overseas minister and chancellor, to again authority. He was, as Henry Kissinger has noticed, the daddy of realpolitik. However wanting compromising on his overarching purpose Metternich aimed to accommodate liberalism and nationalism as a lot as attainable. Siemann attracts on beforehand unexamined archives to deliver this multilayered and dazzling man to life. We meet him as a tradition-conscious imperial rely, an early industrial entrepreneur, an admirer of Britain’s liberal structure, a failing reformer in a fragile multiethnic state, and a person liable to generally scandalous relations with glamorous ladies.

Hailed on its German publication as a masterpiece of historic writing, Metternich will endure as a vital information to nineteenth-century Europe, indispensable for understanding the forces of revolution, response, and moderation that formed the trendy world.