1913 Read Online Free PDF Page B

The young heir’s only consolation is that his car has wheels with golden spokes, just like the ones on the Emperor’s carriage. But when it comes to the majestic title, well, the only man to have held that since 1848 is Emperor Franz Joseph. Or, to be more precise:
    His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, by God’s Grace Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria; King of Jerusalem etc.; Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Kraków; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Bukowina; Grand Prince of Transylvania, Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, of Auschwitz and Zator, of Teschen, Friaul, Dubrovnik and Zadar; Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca; Prince of Trento and Brixen; Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and Istria: Count of Hohenems, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenburg etc.; Lord of Hohenems, Kotor and the Windic March; Grand Voivod of the Voivodship of Serbia etc., etc.
    The schoolchildren who had to learn this by heart always laughed hardest at the ‘etc., etc.’, for it sounded like the whole world belonged to him, and as if only a small portion of it had been mentioned. But for Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne, it’s the three words rightbefore the ‘etc., etc.’ that really make him seethe: the ‘Voivodship of Serbia’. A battle is raging down in the Balkans, and he’s deeply unsettled by it. So he requests a meeting in Schönbrunn Palace with the ‘Grand Voivod of the Vovoidship of Serbia’ – the Emperor, whose white side-whiskers are as long as his title.
    Arriving at Schönbrunn, Franz Ferdinand alights from – or rather, springs out of – his Gräf & Stift automobile in his general’s uniform, and bolts up the steps towards Franz Joseph’s study. He announces that urgent action needs to be taken in order to stop the Serbs. The Kingdom of Serbia is becoming too rebellious at the southeastern flank of the Empire, he says, destabilising things, playing with fire. But they will have to act with good judgement. Under no circumstances should they wage a pre-emptive war, such as the one the General Chief of Staff called for in his memorandum of 20 January, because that would be sure to alert Russia to the plan. The Emperor listens impassively to his blustering, clamouring, trembling nephew: ‘I’ll give it some thought.’ Then he utters a cool farewell. The rest is silence. Agitated, Franz Ferdinand rushes off to his enormous automobile. The liveried chauffeur turns on the engine and, spurred on by the heir, roars off down Schönbrunner Schlossstrasse at breakneck speed. If Franz Ferdinand must resign himself to spending his whole life waiting, then at least he shouldn’t do so stuck in traffic.

    Standing by an upstairs window in the Troyanovsky household, Stalin is taking one of his short breaks from his work. He pulls the curtain aside and peers curiously but distractedly down at the heir’s automobile, which is racing along at great speed beneath his gaze. Lenin too had once stood in that very spot, always staying with the Troyanovskys when he was in Vienna. Elsewhere in the city in that February of 1913, a young Croat casts an expert eye over the car with the golden wheels as it races past. As a car mechanic and, as of recently, a test driver for Mercedes in Wiener Neustadt, he’s intimately acquainted with the qualities of the heir’s automobile. His name is Josip Broz, a21-year-old daredevil and lady’s man who is currently being ‘kept’ as a lover by the upper-class Liza Spuner, an arrangement that includes having his fencing lessons paid for. (He also uses her financial aid to send child support back to his homeland for his newborn son Leopard, whose mother he has recently left.) Liza has him drive her all over Austria in his test car on trips to buy her new clothes. When she falls