Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal

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Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal (September 27, 1854 - February 17, 1912) was an Austrian diplomat.

Born in Gross-Skal, Bohemia (now Hrubá Skála, Czech Republic), he entered the diplomatic service of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, beginning as attaché in Paris (1877). In 1906 he replaced Count Goluchowski as minister of foreign affairs. His major accomplishment was the annexation of Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1908 on the basis of a secret agreement with Russian foreign minister Alexander Izvolsky, which appeared to be a triumph for Austria (and won him the title of Count). "It was, however, one of those pyrrhic victories, which seem brilliant at the moment, but which bring more misfortune than success, if looked at from a longer perspective" (Fay, p. 394). It stirred deep resentment in Serbia and Russia, caused the rest of Europe to distrust Austrian diplomacy, and was one of the factors that helped bring about World War I.

"Of Aerenthal Bülow states that he was the grandson of a certain Lexa, a Jewish grain merchant of Prague ennobled in the nineteenth century under the name of Aehrenthal (literally 'valley of grain') in allusion to his calling. This Jewish strain led to his being often contemptuously referred to as Lexa in the marginal notes of Kaiser Wilhelm... 'His diplomacy' writes [Olof Hoijer], 'composed more of hard arrogance and dissolvent intrigue than of prudent reserve and ingratiating souplesse was a mixture of pretention and subtlety, of force and ruse, of realism and cynicism: his readiness to cheat, to circumvent, to outwit hid a harsh and ruthless will.' Asquith regarded him as the cleverest and perhaps the least scrupulous of Austrian statesmen. He undoubtedly showed himself to be an able and ambitious diplomat, a cool negotiator, a wide-awake observer, a patient listener, a discrete talker endowed with great outward calm but with a lively and dominating imagination more passionate than clear sighted." (Albertini, Vol. 1, pp. 190-91.)

[edit] References

Albertini, Luigi (tr. and ed. Isabella M. Massey, 1952). The Origins of the War of 1914
Encyclopedia Britannica, article "Aloys, Count Lexa von Aehrenthal"
Fay, Sidney B. (1928, repr. 1966). The Origins of the World War
Hoijer, Olof (1922). Le Comte d'Aehrenthal et la politique de violence