Heinrich Ritter von Srbik (legally Heinrich Srbik in Austria after 1919; 10 November 1878 – 16 February 1951) was an Austrian historian who became involved on the fringes of politics before and during the Hitler years.
Life and works Family provenance Heinrich von Srbik was born in Vienna. He was a twin. His father, Dr. Franz Joseph von Srbik (1841–1910), was a lawyer by training who was employed in the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Finance. Franz Joseph von Srbik was also an expert on art history and a noted collector of old copper-plate engravings. Heinrich's mother, Walpurga Graurt (1847–1898), was a daughter of the Catholic historian and classical philologist from the north of Germany, Heinrich Wilhelm Grauert, who had died young. His twin was the army officer turned glaciologist Robert Srbik (1878–1948). There were two older siblings. Heinrich von Srbik's grandfather Franz Seraphicus (1807–1897) had received his hereditary knighthood, and the accompanying right to add the word "von" in front of the family name in 1868, only ten years before Heinrich's birth. With the new post-imperial constitution agreed in 1919, the nobility and the titles by which they differentiated themselves were abolished. Heinrich von Srbik continued to use the "von" as far as possible, and indeed rejected the idea of changing the family name from "Srbik" to "Serbik" because he feared it might lead to the complete loss of the "von" prefix. There is no consistency between surviving sources over whether or when to included the "von" in his name.
Early years During the early and middle 1890s von Srbik attended the Theresianum, a prestigious secondary school in Vienna 10, a short distance to the south of the city centre. Here he was taught by the journalist-historian Eugen Guglia who triggered his enthusiasm for the study of history.
In 1897 he enrolled at the University of Vienna. Between 1898 and 1901 he studied at the university's Institute for Austrian Historical Research. The nature of the historical identity of Austria, subsumed as it was for many purposes in the ethnically and culturally disparate Habsburg empire, was much debated among scholars in Vienna during this period, and the theme was one which would become central in von Srbik's later researches. As a newly qualified historian he would become an enthusiastic supporter of closer economic integration within the Austrian empire as a means whereby the entire construct might be prevented from total disintegration during an age of intensifying nationalism. Student contemporaries at the institute included Wilhelm Bauer (1877–1953) and Hans Hirsch (1878–1940) both of whom became friends and, later, professional colleagues. As a student, during 1898/99 Srbik joined the "Verein Deutscher Hochschüler", a student fraternity better remembered by its subsequent name as the "Burschenschaft Gothia".
In 1901 Heinrich von Srbik received his doctorate in return for a study on Frederick III, Burgrave of Nuremberg. His supervisor for this work was Oswald Redlich. Other historians by whom he was particularly influenced during his student years included Alfons Dopsch and Engelbert Mühlbacher. The focus of his studies as a university student was on medieval history. After Mühlbacher's death in 1903 it was the medievalist Dopsch who, aware of the academic currents of the times, encouraged him to turn his attentions more towards social and economic history.
Early post-qualification career Thus equipped, in October 1902 he became a staff member at the "Commission for Modern Austrian History", working for Ludwig Bittner on creating a catalogue index of Austrian state treaties and, more specifically, from September 1903 on a catalogue index of state treaties concluded between Austria and the Netherlands. In 1904 he started on a parallel second job, working as an internee or assistant (sources differ) at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research (since 1903 under the direction of Emil von Ottenthal), where he continued to work till 1912, by which time he had taken on the role of librarian at the institute.
Meanwhile in 1907 von Srbik received his habilitation (higher post-graduate degree) from the University Department for Austrian History, in return for a piece of work on the Austrian export trade between 1658 and 1780 during "the age of mercantilism".Heinrich Ritter von Srbik, Der staatliche Exporthandel Österreichs von Leopold I. bis Maria Theresia. Untersuchungen zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte Österreichs im Zeitalter des Merkantilismus (Wien 1907) The habilitation qualification opened the way for a teaching career in the universities sector and gave him authorisation to lecture on Austrian history. He now accepted a position as a "Privatdozent" (tutor). Three years later he obtained the far less restrictive "venia docendi" (authorisation ) permitting him to lecture and teach "general history" at the university, on the basis of a treatise he produced on the seventeenth century mercantilist-cameralist, Wilhelm von Schröder.
In 1911 von Srbik accepted an additional supplementary appointment as a "Beisitzer" (loosely, "process assessor") on the "Burschenschaftliche Historische Kommission" (fraternity historical commission).
Graz In 1912 the University of Graz, in Styria, far to the south of Vienna, appointed von Srbik to an extraordinary professorship in "general history". Promotion came in 1917 when he became an ordinary (i.e. full) professor in Modern History and Economic History. In the long summer breaks during the four years between 1915 and 1918, as a reserve officer (presumably ever since having undertaken his military service two decades earlier), von Srbik served in the Austrian army on the Italian front. During his years at Graz he published his 256 page "Studies on the Austrian Salt Industry" in 1917. After that he turned away from economic history and, with "Wallensteins End" published in 1920, switched to the history of political ideas.
Vienna Srbik returned to Vienna in 1922, taking over the university teaching chair in Modern History. Among his better remembered students from his Vienna years were the writer Heimito von Doderer, Chancellor Josef Klaus and the historians Taras Borodajkewycz and Hellmuth Rössler.
Soon after his return to Vienna he was invited, by Erich Marcks (1861–1938) to produce an essay on Metternich for a compilation volume that Marcks was producing on "Masters of Politics". The essay proved the launch pad for a more substantial project. Heinrich Srbik's two volume biography of Metternich was published in 1925 and is still considered by admirers, almost a century later, a standard work on the man whom many lauded or blamed for having created a political road map that was followed across much of Europe for more than a generation after 1815. Srbik is credited by some with having coined the concept of the "Metternich System", though a consensus has emerged among commentators more recently that Metternich himself had rejected belief in anything so prescriptive as a "system", and would indeed have taken issue with a number of Srbik's other conclusions about his political methods and achievements. Srbik saw Metternich as a conservative, whose world view had been formed before the French Revolution, who stood for defending the monarchist state against the destructive impulses created by revolutionary and egalitarian precepts. Even if he backed "pure monarchy", unconstrained by and constitutional limitations, Srbik insisted that Metternich was the enemy, equally, of monarchical despotism. For Metternich it was less the will of a monarch and more the rule of law that should preserve good order within the state and the balance of power between states.Wolfgang Fleischer: Heimito von Doderer – Das Leben – Das Umfeld des Werks in Fotos und Dokumenten. Wien 1995, p. 77.
Ministerial appointment The 1927 July uprising was followed by a period of intensifying political instability, amidst indications that the post-imperial republican democracy imposed in 1919 had never entirely taken root in Austria within the political class; nor, indeed, among voters. Srbik himself made no secret of his belief that the truncated version of Austria that had emerged after the war was simply too small to be viable as a stand-alone state. Srbik would not have been seen as part of the political establishment. However, when yet another new government took power in September 1929, Heinrich Srbick was a member of it. The new chancellor, Johannes Schober, was not a new face in politics, having already served as chancellor (albeit relatively briefly) as early as 1921/22. Unusually, there is no indication that Schober had ever been a member of any political party. Even more unusually, in the broader context of European political developments during the first half of the twentieth century, approximately 50% of the ministers in the Schober government in office between September 1929 and September 1930 had no party political affiliation. One of these independent members of the government, managing the Department for Training and Education between 16 October 1929 and 25 September 1930, was Heinrich Srbik. In the context of the wider political and economic crisis, there was little time for developing or implementing any changes in respect of training and education, however. It became known that Srbik had been offered and accepted the job only after the chancellor's preferred choice, the well-regarded neurosurgeon Anton Eiselsberg, had turned it down. Srbik's 1929 incursion into the world of government is reported in sources, if at all, as a brief and inconsequential "intermezzo" during what was, in the wider context, an exceptionally eventful year.
Career peak Meanwhile Srbik's reputation and career as an historian had been transformed by the timely appearance of his Metternich biography and the positive reaction to it in academic circles. During the later 1920s and early 1930s he received offers of professorships from the universities of Cologne, Bonn, Munich and even Berlin. He turned them all down. His brief ministerial career had deferred but not terminated the major project on which he was working at the time in Vienna, a five volume work entitled "Sources on Austria's German policy 1859–1866" which would be published, volume by volume, between 1934 and 1938.
Bears' Cave