A Perfect Monarch: The Image of Francis Joseph I in Textbooks for Habsburg Schools

Abstract

The extraordinary popularity of Emperor Francis Joseph I among the population of Austria-Hungary and the phenomenon of sustainable loyalty to the ruling dynasty of Habsburgs still remain on the immediate research agenda of historians today. The development of these phenomena was strongly contributed to by the Habsburg government politics on the patriotic education of school youth and promotion of the Habsburg dynastic myth, an important part of which was the figure of Francis Joseph. This paper is an attempt to reconstruct the idea of Francis Joseph I that was transmitted to hundreds of thousands of students in Cisleithania during their compulsory history classes at school. The history textbooks are well-known to be widely exploited, in a way no other means could match, in order to convey official historical images and relevant political beliefs to young people. For this reason, the history textbooks recommended by the Ministry of Culture and Education between 1880 and 1918 were selected as primary sources for this research. The author maintains that narratives about Francis Joseph in these textbooks have hardly any significant discrepancies either in plot or in ideological concepts and, in fact, they duplicate key thoughts in different languages and different terms. The research resulted in a reconstruction of a peculiar scheme, according to which Habsburg schoolchildren learn about their emperor as a sovereign and a person. According to this scheme, they were also led to believe that all good citizens of Austria-Hungary ought to be emotionally attached and constantly grateful to the emperor; they also ought to admire their wise ruler and regard him, with his perfect human characteristics, as an excellent role model.