Klemens von Metternich
Austrian diplomat and statesman
Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar, Prince of Metternich-Winneburg zu Beilstein (15 May 1773 – 11 June 1859), was an Austrian diplomat who was at the center of European affairs for three decades as the Austrian Empire's foreign minister from 1809 and Chancellor from 1821 until the liberal Revolutions of 1848 forced his resignation.
Quotes
edit- Italy is only a geographical expression.
- Astarita, Tommaso (2000). Between Salt Water And Holy Water: A History Of Southern Italy. p. 264.
- I made history and therefore did not find time to write it.
- Klemens von Metternich, “Mein Politisches Testament”, Aus Metternich’s Nachgelassenen Papieren, 7.Bd, hrsg., R. Metternich-Winneburg (Wien: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1883, pp.633-642.
- Strength in Right
- His motto
- Kraft im Recht (also translated as "Might through Right)
- Klemens von Metternich, “Mein Politisches Testament”, Aus Metternich’s Nachgelassenen Papieren, 7.Bd, hrsg., R. Metternich-Winneburg (Wien: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1883, pp.633-642.
- But what did he mean by that?
- Metternich remarking upon hearing the news of Castlereagh's death by suicide.
- Greenhalgh, Michael. Marble Past, Monumental Present: Building with Antiquities in the Mediaeval Mediterranean. Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2009 (pp. 20).
- There is a wide sweep about my mind. I am always above and beyond the preoccupation of most public men; I cover a ground much vaster than they can see. I cannot keep myself from saying about twenty times a day: 'How right I am, and how wrong they are.'
- Landes, David, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge, 1969 (p. 353).
- Among the causes of the tremendous confusion characterising present-day Europe is the transplantation of British institutions to the Continent where they are in complete contradiction to existing conditions, so that their application becomes either illusory or distorted. The so-called "British school" has been the cause of the French Revolution, and the consequences of this revolution, so anti-British in tendency, devastate Europe today. The concepts of freedom and order are so inseparable in the British mind that the last stable-boy would laugh in the face of the reformers if they appeared by preaching his freedom.
- Statement in later life recorded in Clemens Metternich, Aus Metternich's Nachgelassenen Papieren, Vol. 8, ed. Alfons v. Kinkowstroem (1880), p. 218, quoted in Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812–1822 (1957; 1973), pp. 202-203
Quotes about Metternich
edit- Most people associate me with Metternich. And that is childish. My only connection with Metternich is a book I wrote: It was to be the first volume in a lengthy study of the construction and disintegration of international order in the 19th century. The series was to cover the whole period up to World War I, that's all.
- Henry Kissinger, in interview with Oriana Fallaci, The New Republic (December 16, 1972)
- Prince Metternich thinks he is a conservative, in clinging obstinately to the status quo in Europe; we think ourselves conservative in preaching and advising everywhere concessions, reforms and improvements, where public opinion demands them; you on the contrary refuse them.
- Lord Palmerston, remarks to Count Dietrichstein recorded in Dietrichstein to Metternich (13 March 1848), quoted in A. J. P. Taylor, The Italian Problem in European Diplomacy, 1847–1849 (1934), p. 32
- Just as the fall of the Bastille launched the great French revolution, so the central European revolutions of 1848 were launched by a fall, in this case the fall of a single man, Prince Metternich, Chancellor of Austria since 1821 and the symbol of reaction and repression. On 13 March 1848 discontented aristocrats persuaded the Emperor to dismiss Metternich, and with this the conservative order collapsed.
- A. J. P. Taylor, Revolutions and Revolutionaries (1981), p. 87
