Metternich gets a makeover

This is a giant Teutonic forest of a book, to be progressed through with determination as if by seasoned infantry; it is as far as biography can get from a Viennese waltz. But it has its rewards. It is a very extensive and well-researched chronicle of the subject’s monumental career — 39 years as foreign minister of the Austrian Empire, the last 27 of them also as the state chancellor, and an extensive diplomatic career prior to all that. Wolfram Siemann presents and argues for a new and rather liberal interpretation of ‘the Metternich system’ in place of the normal view of Metternich’s influence as rigid and reactionary. The author goes through considerable gymnastics and arbitrary allocations of guilt and imputations of motives to others that are debatable, to portray Metternich as a far-seeing modernist and constitutional democrat, persevering against less principled and capable people, both hidebound reactionaries and nihilistic revolutionaries and militarists.