Count Kasimir Felix Badeni
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Count Kasimir Felix Badeni (German: Kasimir Felix Graf von Badeni, Polish: Kazimierz Feliks hrabia Badeni) (October 14, 1846 Surochów, Galicia – July 9, 1909 Krasne, Galicia) was Minister-President of the Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1895 until 1897. Many people in Austria, especially Emperor Franz Joseph, had placed great hope in Badeni's ability to solve some of the Empire's constitutional problems, but he disappointed them.
The ethnic Polish aristocrat Badeni, born in Galicia, had served as governor of that province, during which time he played a key role in the rapprochement between the Polish elite and the Ruthenians that came to be known as the "New Era". He was devoted to the Empire and the Emperor and was a firm conservative, which combined with his successes in Galicia impressed Emperor Franz Joseph
He came to power in Austria after the failure of prince Alfred III. zu Windisch-Grätz's coalition ministry of conservatives and liberals. In 1896 he succeeded in implementing a form of universal male suffrage but made it palatable to the ruling interests of the Empire. To the previous four classes of voters, which depended on the amount of taxes each individual paid, his reform added a fifth class to include every adult male below the five-guilder threshold set for the fourth class in the 1882 Taaffe reform.
However, Badeni's "ordinance of April 5, 1897" would prove an astonishing failure. The ordinance declared "that Czech and German should be the languages of the 'inner service' throughout Bohemia." This meant that civil servants in the province of Bohemia would have to know both Czech and German, since government business would be conducted in both languages for internal Bohemian affairs. Germans in Bohemia were outraged, since this effectively excluded majority of them from government jobs; Czechs learned German in school, but Germans had usually little to no knowledge of the Czech language.
Late-19th-century Germans in Austria-Hungary, as a general rule, wanted the Empire to maintain its German character established during the period of forcible Germanization in the 17th and 18th century, so they resisted the demands of the other ethnics for recognition of their languages. Badeni's ordinance was seen by Germans as the "last straw" in a series of concessions. Badeni was not prepared for the level of animosity the Germans of Bohemia and of the rest of the Empire directed at him due to his ordinance.
The fringe German Nationalist Party, headed by Georg Schönerer, hoping to destabilize the Empire and join the German lands of Austria to the new German Empire, disrupted parliamentary proceedings and instigated violent protests. Although most Germans of Austria had no sympathy for the Nationalist Party's cause, they participated in street protests across the Austro-Hungarian Empire, hoping to have the ordinance repealed.
In November 1897, Franz Joseph, frightened by the mass agitation of some of the most important segments of society, dismissed Badeni.
Some authors feel that Badeni was unaccustomed to the political dynamics of the more-industrialized western part of the Empire; he was used to the largely illiterate peasants of Galicia. That is one possible explanation for Badeni's extraordinary political blunder.
| Preceded by: Erich von Kielmansegg |
Minister-President of Austria 1895-1897 |
Followed by: Paul Gautsch von Frankenthurn |
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[edit] Notes
Regarding personal names: Graf is a title, translated as Count, not a first or middle name. The female form is Gräfin.
